Air quality can affect childrens’ future financial prospects

A new study titled ‘Childhood PM2.5 exposure and upward mobility in the United States’ has found a link between exposure to poor air quality as a child and lower earnings in later life.

The study focused on the US but was a collaboration between Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and European University of Rome. It was designed to build on earlier research which had looked into the relationship between exposure to PM2.5 and economic opportunity.

The team claim this work is the first to investigate this relationship using ‘granular, census tract-level data and state-of-the-art methods to adjust for confounding variables.’

The study, which was published yesterday (September 9th) in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analysed data on PM2.5 exposure and economic earnings from 86% of all U.S. census tracts (small statistical subdivisions of a county) from 1980 to 2010.

They focussed on people born between 1978 and 1983 and looked at what they were earning in 2014-15, when they would have been between 31 and 37 years old.

To measure economic mobility, the team used a system called Absolute Upward Mobility (AUM) – the mean income rank in adulthood of children born to families in the bottom quarter of national income distribution.

They found that the greater exposure to PM2.5 in infancy, the lower their earnings in later life. Specifically, they found that an increase in PM2.5 exposure by just 1μg/m³ in 1982 was associated with a 1.146% lower AUM in 2015. They describe this disparity as ‘statistically significant’.

Co-lead author Luca Merlo, researcher at European University of Rome, said: ‘Our findings underscore the necessity of implementing stringent air quality standards nationally. They also suggest the necessity of locally tailored interventions to mitigate air pollution and of integrated policies that address both environmental and economic inequalities..

Harvard Chan School ‘s Francesca Dominici, faculty director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative said: ‘This study takes a big step toward filling the knowledge gap on the crucial link between environmental factors and long-term economic outcomes. The findings suggest that air pollution can have lasting impacts beyond health effects—and that these impacts vary across regions and populations.’

The full study can be purchased here.