C. Katharina Spieß, Katja Coneus
This paper examines the impact of outdoor pollution and parental smoking on children's health from birth until the age of three years in Germany. We use representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), combined with five air pollution levels. These data were provided by the Federal Environment Agency and cover the years 2002 to 2007. Our work makes two important contributions. First, we use European data to replicate and extend an important US study by following the effects of pollution exposure and parental smoking on child health during the first four years of life. For infants, as well as for two- to three-year-olds, we are able to account for time-invariant and unobserved neighborhood and maternal characteristics. Second, instead of relying solely on mean pollution levels, we also calculate latent pollution measures. Our results suggest a significantly negative impact of some pollutants on infant health. High exposure to CO prior to birth causes, on average, a 289 gram lower birth weight. With respect to toddler health, we find that disorders such as bronchitis and respiratory illnesses are affected particularly by O3 levels.
JEL-Classification: I12;Q53;J13
Keywords: pollution exposure, latent factors, child health, early childhood
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