Full Citation
Title: A Study Design to Measure Health Benefits from Coal Power Plant Closures
Citation Type: Conference Paper
Publication Year: 2023
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Abstract: In the last decade, significant infrastructure changes occurred in the U.S. electricity sector. Between 2010-2018, 546 coal-fired power units retired, while natural gas and renewable developments grew. These infrastructure changes allow for a natural experiment examining the impact of power-plant emissions on population health, and thus can be used to study the health impacts of coal emissions on respiratory diseases. Using survey data from the National Center for Health Statistics, this paper proposes a study design to examine health benefits and estimate changes in health disparities from the closure of U.S. coal power plants. Respondent data from the National Health Interview Survey on respiratory health outcomes can be merged with the location of power plants and climatic wind direction. We provide a method to merge restricted access data and estimate a statistical model of health outcomes that allows data to remain deidentified while comparing across disparity dimensions (e.g. income, race), wind direction, and coal power plant closures. The findings contribute to the fields of environmental health economics, and energy economics by quantifying the benefit of improved health from coal plant closures across racial and income subgroups.
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Authors: Ohler, Adrienne
Conference Name: 2023 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting
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Data Collections: IPUMS Health Surveys - NHIS
Topics: Health, Natural Resource Management
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