IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/glodps/1618.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Blowin' in the Wind: Smog and Suicidal Ideation among School-Age Children

Author

Listed:
  • Zhang, Xin
  • Chen, Xi
  • Sun, Hong
  • Yang, Yuanjian

Abstract

This paper attempts to provide one of the first population-based causal estimates of the effect of air pollution on suicidal ideation-a key precursor to suicide attempt and completion-among school-age children. We use daily variations in the local wind direction as instruments to address endogeneity in pollution exposure. Matching a unique risk behavior survey of 55,000 students from 273 schools with comprehensive data on air pollutants and weather conditions according to the exact date and location of schooling, our findings indicate that a 1% decline in daily PM2.5 is associated with a 0.36% reduction in the probability of suicidal ideation. Moreover, the dose-response relationship reveals that the marginal effects increase significantly and non-linearly with elevated concentration of PM2.5. The effect is particularly pronounced among younger, male, students from low-educated families, and students with lower grades.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhang, Xin & Chen, Xi & Sun, Hong & Yang, Yuanjian, 2025. "Blowin' in the Wind: Smog and Suicidal Ideation among School-Age Children," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1618, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:glodps:1618
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/319539/1/GLO-DP-1618.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    suicidal ideation; air pollution; school-age children; risky behaviors; China;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects
    • 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:zbw:glodps:1618. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/glabode.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.