Ambient Air Pollution and the Transmission of Infectious Diseases: A New Econometric Framework

Abstract

Estimating the relationship between ambient air pollution and airborne diseases is challenging because it requires researchers to account for virus epidemiological characteristics, to isolate the impact of air pollution from potential confounders, and to consider the potential delayed impact due to incubation, testing and reporting. We propose an econometric framework to address these challenges: we rely on the epidemiological Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered-Deceased (SIRD) model to construct the outcome of interest, the Instrument Variable (IV) model to estimate the causal relationship, and the Flexible-Distributed-Lag (FDL) model to understand the dynamics. We apply this approach to two cases: (1) COVID-19 data in China and (2) influenza data in Japan. In the former case, we find that air pollution significantly increases the growth rate of COVID-19 cases; while in the latter case, we observe small and statistically insignificant impacts.

Note:
Funding Information: Financial support from the RGC Theme-based Research Scheme (T24- 508-22), Peking University Early Career Grant (No. 7101303264), and the Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance (CIDEG) of Tsinghua University is greatly appreciated.

Declaration of Interests: None.

Keywords: air pollution, Infectious Disease, Covid-19, Influenza