Working Paper: NBER ID: w21647
Authors: W. Walker Hanlon
Abstract: Mortality was extremely high in the industrial cities of the 19th century, but little is known about the role played by pollution in generating this pattern, due largely to a lack of direct pollution measures. I overcome this problem by combining data on the local composition of industries in Britain with information on the intensity with which industries used polluting inputs. Using this new measure, I show that pollution had a strong impact on mortality as far back as the 1850s. Industrial pollution explains 30-40% of the relationship between mortality and population density in 1851-60, and nearly 60% of this relationship in 1900. Growing industrial coal use from 1851-1900 reduced life expectancy by at least 0.57 years. A back-of-the envelope estimate suggests that the value of this loss of life, expressed as a one-time cost, was equal to at least 0.33-1.00 of annual GDP in 1900. Overall, these results show that industrial pollution was a major cause of mortality in the 19th century, particularly in urban areas, and that industrial growth during this period came at a substantial cost to health.
Keywords: pollution; mortality; 19th century; industrial cities; health costs
JEL Codes: I10; N33; N53; Q53
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| industrial pollution (Q53) | mortality (I12) |
| growing industrial coal use (L71) | life expectancy (J17) |
| industrial pollution (Q53) | GDP cost (E20) |
| one standard deviation increase in industrial pollution (F64) | mortality (I12) |