IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ira/wpaper/202422.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Coal's Last Breath: Examining Health Impacts in England's Coal’s Phase Out

Author

Listed:
  • Aayushi Sharma

    (University of Barcelona & GiM-IREA, John M. Keynes 1, Barcelona, 08034, Spain.)

  • Laia Maynou Pujolras

    (University of Barcelona & GiM-IREA, John M. Keynes 1, Barcelona, 08034, Spain.)

  • Jordi J. Teixidó

    (University of Barcelona & GiM-IREA, John M. Keynes 1, Barcelona, 08034, Spain.)

Abstract

This study used a natural experiment to determine how a nation-wide coal phase out strategy affects air pollution and in-turn health outcomes (physical and mental health) in England. The introduction of the Carbon Tax policy in the United Kingdom in 2013, precipitated the closure of multiple coal plants, highlighting the imperative for further investigation into its implications. Using a Staggered Difference-in-Difference estimator, we show coal plant closures improve air quality and related health outcomes. In particular, we find coal plant closures reduces hospital admissions among respiratory patients, and asthma (among adults). Additionally, they reduce mortality among the most deprived under the age of 75 years, but not among the non-deprived population. Finally, we also document improvements on mortality for mental and behavioral diseases. This results, we show, are not driven by endogenous migration flows. These findings contribute to the literature on the health effects of pollution by focusing on the effects of removing, rather than adding, pollution sources that in this case result from more stringent climate policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Aayushi Sharma & Laia Maynou Pujolras & Jordi J. Teixidó, 2024. "Coal's Last Breath: Examining Health Impacts in England's Coal’s Phase Out," IREA Working Papers 202422, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Dec 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:ira:wpaper:202422
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ub.edu/irea/working_papers/2024/202422.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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:ira:wpaper:202422. 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: Alicia García (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feubaes.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.