The Effect of Environmental Regulations on Health and Labor Supply
Date
2021-06-09
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The title of this thesis is ``The Effect of Environmental Regulations on Health and Labor Supply: Evidence from Ontario's Coal Phase-out". It explores the effect of environmental regulations on a wide range of health, and economic outcomes. I use coal phase-out in Ontario, Canada, as a quasi-experimental setting in my study. The first chapter of my thesis is introduction. Then, I explore related works, and conduct a literature review on papers that have studied the effect of pollution on air quality, infant health, adult health, environmental justice, labor supply, income, and productivity. In the third chapter, I present the historical background, and discuss implementation of coal phase-out in Ontario, in detail. In the fourth chapter, I use data from pollution monitoring networks to estimate the impact of Ontario's coal phase-out on the local air quality. I apply a difference-in-differences strategy comparing air pollution concentrations within 20 miles of power plants relative to 20-40 miles before and after their shutdowns. I find that applying this policy decreases O3, and SO2 levels by 6, and 19 percent, respectively. However, the results do not show a statistically significant effect on PM2.5, NOx, NO2, and NO levels. In the fifth chapter, I study the effect of Ontario's coal phase-out on infant, and adult health outcomes such as, birth weight, low birth weight incidence, preterm birth, adult's respiratory, and cardiovascular diseases. I use Canadian Vital Statistics-Birth and Death Databases, and a difference-in-differences strategy. My findings show that coal-fired power plant closures do not significantly change infant, and adult health outcomes. The final chapter, investigates the effect of coal phase-out in Ontario on local migration, labor supply, and income. I use a large-scale panel dataset, Longitudinal Administrative Databank (LAD), and a difference-in-differences method to find the causal relationships. I find that closure of coal-fired power plants in Ontario does not have any significant effect on local migration, and labor supply, on the extensive margin. However, it is associated with a 2.6-3 percent increase in employment income, and a 0.7-0.8 percent increase in market income in the short-, and the long-run, respectively.
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Adibnia, E. (2021). The Effect of Environmental Regulations on Health and Labor Supply (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.