Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
煤烟对婴儿死亡率的影响：来自日本工业化时期的证据
Impacts of coal smoke on infant mortality: Evidence from industrializing Japan
摘要
This study investigates the health consequences of coal smoke during Japan's early industrialization. Using fixed‐effects models and a prefecture‐level panel dataset on actual coal consumption and infant mortality from 1899 to 1910, this study finds that higher coal consumption was positively associated with infant mortality. The baseline estimate suggests that a one‐standard‐deviation increase in the log of coal consumption was associated with approximately 2.1 additional infant deaths per 1000 live births, and that the growth in coal use was associated with an increase in infant mortality equivalent to approximately 11.8 per cent of the overall rise in infant mortality during the sample period. Further estimates using infant deaths by age interval show that this association was weak during the neonatal period but became more pronounced during the post‐neonatal period, particularly from 1 month to under 6 months after birth. These findings suggest that coal‐based industrialization carried health costs in a non‐Western industrializing economy and that the timing of pollution‐related infant mortality differed from that observed in modern contexts.
中文摘要
本研究探讨了日本早期工业化时期煤炭烟雾对健康的影响。利用固定效应模型及1899年至1910年间县级实际煤炭消费量与婴儿死亡率的面板数据，研究发现煤炭消费量的增加与婴儿死亡率呈正相关。基准估计表明，煤炭消费量对数值每增加一个标准差，与每千名活产婴儿中约增加2.1例死亡相关，且煤炭使用的增长与样本期间婴儿死亡率总体上升中约11.8%的增幅相关联。进一步按婴儿死亡年龄区间进行的估计显示，这一关联在新生儿期较弱，而在新生儿后期，尤其是出生后1个月至6个月期间，表现得更为显著。这些发现表明，在非西方工业化经济体中，以煤炭为基础的工业化带来了健康成本，且污染相关婴儿死亡的时间分布与现代情境下观察到的有所不同。