Erschienen in:World Bank Policy Research Working Paper ; No. 7799
Umfang:
1 Online-Ressource (50 p)
Sprache:
Englisch
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments August 19, 2016 erstellt
Beschreibung:
In many developing countries, environmental quality remains low and policies to improve it have been inconsistently effective. This paper conducts a case study of environmental policy in India, focusing on unprecedented Supreme Court rulings that targeted industrial pollution in the Ganga River. In a difference-in-differences framework, the rulings are found to have precipitated reductions in river pollution and one-month infant mortality, both of which persist for more than a decade. The authors then estimate a pollution-mortality dose-response function across twenty-nine rivers in the Ganga Basin, instrumenting for pollution with its upstream counterpart. The estimation reveals a significant external health burden of river pollution, not just in the district of measurement, but also on downstream communities. It further provides suggestive evidence that reducing pollution was an important driver behind declines in infant mortality observed after the rulings