Air Pollution and Migration: Evidence From China's Dynamic Monitoring Survey Data

Air Pollution and Migration: Evidence From China's Dynamic Monitoring Survey Data

Yantuan Yu, Weidong Zhao, Xiuzhen Li, Yun Zhang, Xiao Miao
Copyright: © 2022 |Pages: 24
DOI: 10.4018/JGIM.300816
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Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of air pollution on China’s internal migration using the Migrant Population Dynamic Monitoring Survey and Air Quality Index (AQI) data in 2014. Binary response models suggest that, on average, the probability of the willingness to leave will grow by approximately 0.1 if the average value of AQI is increased by 100 points. The migration effect of sever air pollution still holds using two-stage least squares estimation. In particular, compared to inter-province and intra-city within the same province, interviewees are more willingness to leave in intra-county with the same city. Besides, individuals from the cities in central and western regions, the listed key environmental protection (KEP) cities and cities not listed as resource-based (RB) cities have stronger willingness to leave than those from the cities in eastern region, Non-KEP cities and RB cities. Our results are robust to alternative measures of air pollution and models specification.
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1. Introduction

A satisfy livable environment is an important condition for the city to continuously attract foreign talents and ensure sustainable prosperity. Based on the questionnaire survey data, for example, subjective acceptance of air quality has a significant positive impact on the willingness of graduate students to stay in Beijing (Hao et al., 2020). The ecological environment is the basis for human survival and economic development. However, economic growth is excessively dependent on resource consumption with high pollution and high emission. Besides, the coal-based energy consumption structure and more and more motor vehicle possession bring about continuous deterioration of the ecological environment (Chen et al., 2013), especially the air pollution has become a prominent dilemma in China’s ecological environmental governance. According to the “China Environmental Status Bulletin” in 2015, 265 cities in 338 prefecture-level cities and above had excessive ambient air quality, accounting for 78.4%, and the average over-the-counter ratio was 23.3%. The PM2.5 concentration (fine particulate matter with diameters equal or smaller than 2.5μm) is the most prominent air pollutant in Chinese cities and it is also the main component of Air Quality Index (AQI). According to the international environmental protection organization, in 2015, the PM2.5 annual average concentration of China’s 366 cities is 50.2 μg/m3. However, 80% of them has not yet reached the China’s ambient air quality standards.

With the development of urbanization and industrialization in China, the ecological environment problem becomes more and more serious, especially for air pollution (Rafiq et al., 2016). Not only severe environmental pollution brings great troubles to people’s ecology, production and living space, but also causes the decline of residents’ health and overall welfare levels and the increases the incidence rate of related diseases. Besides respiratory diseases and cancer, it has also greatly affected the prevalence rate of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases (Xu et al., 2013), and has become one of the major threats to people’s health in China (Yang et al., 2013). Air pollution not only brings harm to our body and mind, but also brings inconvenience to our life. The smog in January 2013 affected 1.4 million square kilometers of our country and brought adverse effects to more than 800 million people (Xu et al., 2013). Meanwhile, environmental pollution has also increased the expenditure burdens, exerting adverse effects on economic and social development. During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the Chinese government invested as much as 3.4 trillion yuan in environmental protection (Xu et al., 2013), accounting for 1.4% of Gross Domestic Product.

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