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Air Pollution: Impact on Human Health and Wealth Christopher Sall and Urvashi Narain
Main Messages • This chapter presents estimates of monetary losses of human capital in 172 countries from fatal health conditions caused by exposure to air pollution. • Exposure to air pollution—including ambient particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5), household PM2.5 from cooking with solid fuels, and ambient ozone—caused nearly 6.5 million premature deaths in 2015, accounting for more than 1 in 10 deaths worldwide. A combination of declining air quality, increasing rates of urbanization, and population aging has contributed to a rise in the number of deaths from ambient PM2.5 each year. • Pollution is particularly damaging to the elderly. Individuals age 65 years and older make up about 8 percent of the world’s population but account for 61 percent of fatalities from illnesses attributed to air pollution. • Globally, annual labor income losses from premature mortality caused by air pollution exposure totaled nearly US$179 billion in 2015, an increase of about US$47 billion or 36 percent in real terms since 1995.
Introduction Air pollution damages human health, affecting the value of human capital by reducing labor force participation and productivity, which undercuts the global economy and the lives of the people who constitute it.
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