IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_12197.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Long-Term Effects of Air Pollution on Health and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Socialist East Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Moritz Lubczyk
  • Maria Waldinger

Abstract

What are the long-run effects of sustained exposure to air pollution? A unique natural experiment allows us to examine this question. In 1982, a sudden cut in Soviet oil forced Socialist East Germany to switch to highly polluting lignite coal. While the shock sharply increased air pollution near mining regions, authoritarian restrictions on mobility, housing, and jobs prevented sorting responses. We document persistent labor market impacts over three decades. Exposed individuals work less, earn lower wages, and retire earlier. Health is a key mechanism: infant mortality rises by 9\% and the long-run incidence of asthma and cardiopathy increases significantly.

Suggested Citation

  • Moritz Lubczyk & Maria Waldinger, 2025. "The Long-Term Effects of Air Pollution on Health and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Socialist East Germany," CESifo Working Paper Series 12197, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12197
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp12197.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J60 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - General
    • N54 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - Europe: 1913-
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12197. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.