基于中国当前的经济背景与政策机遇，中国在污染移民问题上更应该具有前瞻性。鉴于此，本项目计划研究中国空气污染所引致的国内移民问题。为实现研究目标，本项目计划：（1）借助卫星图片反演技术，构造包含空气污染、人口迁移及社会经济信息的中国县级面板数据库；（2）利用大气逆温现象作为工具变量、构造实证策略，识别空气污染对人口迁移的因果关系；（3）考察污染移民在不同人群间的差异，分析污染移民对人力资本结构与分布的影响；（4）根据边际影响估计系数，评估污染移民的经济成本，提出政策建议。本项目旨在从移民视角拓展经济学对空气污染外部性的认识，并为政策制定者对污染治理政策的成本与收益、以及对未来全国人力资本配置的判断、乃至地方产业结构和经济发展方式的选择，提供源于经济学领域的学术参考。

We propose to quantitatively examine the causal linkages between air pollution and internal migration in China. To conduct our research, we plan to: (i) construct a detailed county-specific panel which includes the net-migration derived from China’s population census and the AOD-based air pollutants simulated from satellite images; (ii) better instrument the endogenous air quality by exploiting the thermal inversions in a generalized 2SLS framework; (iii) extend our baseline framework across gender, age cohorts and education levels respectively, so that the changes in human capital induced by air pollution can be detected; (iv) evaluate the economic cost of pollution-induced migration based on the estimated MWTP. Since the deteriorating air quality and diminishing demographic dividend are two of the most pressing problems in China’s economy from both health and economic perspectives, our research may have important academic contributions and public policy implications.