The Mortality and Medical Costs of Air Pollution: Evidence from Changes in Wind Direction
The Mortality and Medical Costs of Air Pollution: Evidence from Changes in Wind Direction
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DOI：
10.1257/aer.20180279
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发表时间：
2019-12-01
影响因子：
10.7
通讯作者：
Reif, Julian
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Deryugina, Tatyana;Heutel, Garth;Reif, Julian
我们使用医疗保险数据估计了急性细颗粒物暴露对美国老年人死亡率、医疗保健使用和医疗费用的因果影响。我们利用当地风向的变化来测量空气污染，并开发了一种新的方法，使用机器学习来估计因污染暴露而损失的寿命年。最后，我们使用预期寿命和通用机器学习推理来表征治疗效果的异质性。这两种方法都发现，死亡影响集中在大约25%的老年人口中。
We estimate the causal effects of acute fine particulate matter exposure on mortality, health care use, and medical costs among the US elderly using Medicare data. We instrument for air pollution using changes in local wind direction and develop a new approach that uses machine learning to estimate the life-years lost due to pollution exposure. Finally, we characterize treatment effect heterogeneity using both life expectancy and generic machine learning inference. Both approaches find that mortality effects are concentrated in about 25 percent of the elderly population.