Air Pollution and Infant Mortality: Evidence from the Expansion of Natural Gas Infrastructure

Natural gas has emerged as an increasingly attractive source of energy since it is highly efficient, abundant, and cleaner than any other fossil fuel. In this paper, we examine the impact of widespread adoption of natural gas as a source of fuel on infant mortality in Turkey, using variation across provinces and over time in the intensity of natural gas utilization. Our estimates indicate that the expansion of natural gas infrastructure has resulted in a significant decrease in the rate of infant mortality. Specifically, a one-percentage point increase in natural gas intensity - measured by the rate of subscriptions to natural gas services - would cause the infant mortality rate to decrease by 3.9 percent, which would translate into approximately 340 infant lives saved in 2011 alone.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Social Science Research Network

• Publication date

  2017-03-01

• Fields of study

  Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.2139/SSRN.2212335
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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