TY  - JOUR
AU  - Jayachandran,Seema
TI  - Air Quality and Early-Life Mortality: Evidence from Indonesia's Wildfires
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14011
PY  - 2008
Y2  - May 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14011
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14011.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Seema Jayachandran
Department of Economics
Northwestern University
2001 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
Tel: (847) 491-4757
Fax: (847) 491-7001
E-Mail: seema@northwestern.edu
AB  - Smoke from massive wildfires blanketed Indonesia in late 1997. This paper examines the impact this air pollution (particulate matter) had on fetal, infant, and child mortality. Exploiting the sharp timing and spatial patterns of the pollution and inferring deaths from "missing children" in the 2000 Indonesian Census, I find that the pollution led to 15,600 missing children in Indonesia (1.2% of the affected birth cohorts). Prenatal exposure to pollution largely drives the result. The effect size is much larger in poorer areas, suggesting that differential effects of pollution contribute to the socioeconomic gradient in health.
ER  -