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The European Journal of Health Economics
Published in: The European Journal of Health Economics 6/2019

01-08-2019 | Original Paper

The impact of ambient air pollution on hospital admissions

Authors: Massimo Filippini, Giuliano Masiero, Sandro Steinbach

Published in: The European Journal of Health Economics | Issue 6/2019

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Abstract

Ambient air pollution is the environmental factor with the most significant impact on human health. Several epidemiological studies provide evidence for an association between ambient air pollution and human health. However, the recent economic literature has challenged the identification strategy used in these studies. This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion by investigating the association between ambient air pollution and morbidity using hospital admission data from Switzerland. Our identification strategy rests on the construction of geographically explicit pollution measures derived from a dispersion model that replicates atmospheric conditions and accounts for several emission sources. The reduced form estimates account for location and time fixed effects and show that ambient air pollution has a substantial impact on hospital admissions. In particular, we show that \({\text{SO}}_{2}\) and \({\text{NO}}_{2}\) are positively associated with admission rates for coronary artery and cerebrovascular diseases while we find no similar correlation for PM10 and \({\text{O}}_{3}\). Our robustness checks support these findings and suggest that dispersion models can help in reducing the measurement error inherent to pollution exposure measures based on station-level pollution data. Therefore, our results may contribute to a more accurate evaluation of future environmental policies aiming at a reduction of ambient air pollution exposure.
Appendix
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Footnotes
1
For instance, the study by He et al. [18] relies on Chinese city-level mortality data. Because a city in China can be relatively large and heterogeneous, the estimated level of pollution exposure may be significantly different to the true level of pollution exposure. Schlenker and Walker [26] conduct their analysis using zip code level data for California. The average size of a zip code in California is above 37,000 inhabitants, ranging between 11,000 and more than 100,000 inhabitants.
 
2
We perform a number of robustness checks to ensure that the reassignment method does not affect the identification. For instance, we use gridded housing data from the Swiss land register to accomplish the recoding of location information. These results are similar to the estimates obtained with our baseline specification.
 
3
The main topographical areas are the Swiss plateau (North of the Alps), the Basel region with specific climate conditions due to the Rhine valley, the Alpine region (valley floors of all alpine valleys), and the remaining parts. Additional information on these regions are provided in Heldstab et al. [19].
 
4
Note that there are exceptions since some papers based on the inverse distance method can also find high correlation between observed and predicted pollutant levels (e.g., [7]).
 
5
Other moments of the pollution distribution function (e.g., annual median, minimum and maximum) could be also relevant for hospital admissions. However, the use of other moments of pollution exposure is limited by a data protection agreement between the FOEN and external data providers.
 
6
As for possible border effects, note that the dispersion model already accounts for these effects by construction, since it considers emission sources in adjacent regions.
 
7
Ideally, we would account for access to hospital care with a measure of distance to the nearest hospital. However, such data are not available for the entire study period.
 
8
Another approach would be to include spatial effects in the regression model. For this reason, we also estimate spatial lag panel models for count data (see, e.g., [4]). The spatial estimates are very similar to the results of our main model and indicate that spatial lags are of minor relevance for most causes of hospital admissions when using the dispersion model pollution measures.
 
9
Switzerland is a federal state of 26 cantons. Each canton has its own constitution, legislature, and government. Among others, the cantons are responsible for healthcare services, welfare, law enforcement, and public education.
 
10
For instance, Switzerland has recently introduced a new hospital financing system to promote cost-effective health care. Although the system was simultaneously introduced in all cantons, the reimbursement rates for medical treatment are different between cantons.
 
11
We are aware that several studies in the health economics literature use admissions per population as the outcome variable. However, the absolute number of admissions is more appropriate in this context because we can use a count-data model that reflects the data generating process of hospital admissions due to pollution exposure.
 
12
We do not report the estimates of the control variables because of space limitations. The table shows the estimates of 14 (\(7 \times 2\)) regressions. The estimates including all covariates are available upon request from the authors.
 
13
Note that the effects of different pollutants are comparable since they are all measured in \(\upmu \hbox {g}/\hbox {m}^{2}\).
 
14
The negative parameter estimates for some types of pollution could also be caused by insufficient variation in the measures of exposure. For instance, since there are only a few \({\text{SO}}_{2}\) monitoring sites, the within variation in pollution exposure is limited, inducing collinearity between the fixed effects and the measures of pollution exposure.
 
15
As discussed in the literature, in this case the measurement error is likely non-classical. This implies that the covariance tends to be negative (see, e.g., [2]).
 
16
As a measure of explanatory power, we use the Pseudo R-squared value, which is defined as the squared correlation between predicted and observed count outcome.
 
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Metadata
Title
The impact of ambient air pollution on hospital admissions
Authors
Massimo Filippini
Giuliano Masiero
Sandro Steinbach
Publication date
01-08-2019
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
The European Journal of Health Economics / Issue 6/2019
Print ISSN: 1618-7598
Electronic ISSN: 1618-7601
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-019-01049-y

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