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WHAT'S NEW THIS TUESDAY: AIR POLLUTION AND INFANT MORTALITY

Saturday, 9th of February 2013

• AIR POLLUTION AND INFANT MORTALITY: EVIDENCE FROM THE EXPANSION OF NATURAL GAS INFRASTRUCTURE

Resul Cesur, Erdal Tekin, and Aydogan Ulker

Working Paper 18736 http://www.nber.org/papers/w18736

NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 January 2013

We would like to thank Laura Arygs, Ala Cubukcu, and the seminar participants at the Queens College of the City University of New York and the 2012 Southern Economic Association for their comments and suggestions. Chandler McClellan provided excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2013 by Resul Cesur, Erdal Tekin, and Aydogan Ulker. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Air Pollution and Infant Mortality: Evidence from the Expansion of Natural Gas Infrastructure Resul Cesur, Erdal Tekin, and Aydogan Ulker NBER Working Paper No. 18736 January 2013 JEL No. I0,I12,I15,I18,O10,O13,Q42,Q48,Q53

ABSTRACT One of the consequences of rapid economic growth and industrialization in the developing world has been deterioration in environmental conditions and air quality. While air pollution is a serious threat to health in most developing countries, environmental regulations are rare and the determination to address the problem is weak due to ongoing pressures to sustain robust economic growth. Under these constraints, natural gas, as a clean, abundant, and highly-efficient source of energy, has emerged as an increasingly attractive source of fuel, which could address some of these environmental and health challenges faced by these countries without requiring a compromise on their economic development. In this paper, we use the variation across space and time in the expansion of natural gas infrastructure in Turkish provinces using data between 2001 and 2011. Our results indicate that the rate of increase in the use of natural gas has resulted in a significant reduction in the rate of infant mortality in Turkey. In particular, a one-percentage point increase in the rate of subscriptions to natural gas services would cause the infant mortality rate to decline by 4 percent, which could result in 348 infant lives saved in 2011 alone. These results are robust to a large number of specifications. Finally, we utilize supplemental data on total particulate matter and sulfur dioxide to produce direct estimates of the effects of these pollutants on infant mortality using natural gas expansion as an instrument. Our elasticity estimates from the instrumental variable analysis are 1.25 for particulate matter and 0.63 for sulfur dioxide.