Conte Keivabu, Risto;
Rüttenauer, Tobias;
(2022)
London congestion charge: the impact on air pollution and school attendance by socioeconomic status.
Population and Environment
, 43
pp. 576-596.
10.1007/s11111-022-00401-4.
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Abstract
Air pollution negatively affects individuals’ health and human capital accumulation. For example, students’ school performance is hampered by air pollution as it decreases cognitive abilities and increases absences. Moreover, low-income students are the most exposed and vulnerable to the negative effects of air pollution as they lack protective resources and suffer from pre-existing health conditions. Here, we inquire how more stringent traffic regulations implemented in Central London from late 2015 affected pollution levels and school absences. First, we observe a substantive decrease in pollution in the area affected by the regulations from 2016 onwards. Secondly, we use a difference in differences approach to estimate the causal effect of the policy on school absences. For all schools combined, findings do not show any substantive improvement in attendance. However, when looking at the heterogeneous effects of the policy, we observe a significant decrease in absences for schools with a high share of students with low socioeconomic status (SES). Consequently, the findings highlight the efficacy of environmental policy in diminishing pollution levels and to benefit the poor.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | London congestion charge: the impact on air pollution and school attendance by socioeconomic status |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11111-022-00401-4 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-022-00401-4 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Air pollution, Children, Socioeconomic inequalities, Environmental policy |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10155605 |
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