School of Economics, Hainan Open Economy Research Institute, Hainan University, Haikou, China.
Front Public Health. 2022 Mar 8;10:844593. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.844593. eCollection 2022.
The implementation of the Ecological Red Lines (ERL) policy in China is under the background that natural resources have been immoderately exploited for serving rapid economic growth in the last 40 years, where the ecosystem's degradation happened and people's health could be affected. As the secondary industry is the contribution source of rapid growth as well as the threat source that threatens the natural environment and public health, the delimitation of ERL can act as a legal restriction that forces the industries to control the emissions and to upgrade the industrial composition. This paper conducts an ex-post policy evaluation on the improvement effects of industrial structure and residents' health and through ERL's pilot scheme in four provinces of China. By using the difference-in-differences (DID) method, the estimation results show that: (1) The industrial upgrading effect exists but to a small extent, as the ERL policy has generally elevated the tertiary industry's output by only 0.033% and hardly shown any promotion effects on the ratio of the tertiary industry to secondary industry; (2) The residents' health has been significantly improved by 1.029% after ERL policy on the whole, and enhanced over time mostly; (3) The health promotion effects are similar among three out of the four pilot provinces, whereas the industrial upgrading effects performed large heterogeneities among the four. These empirical results may provide references for the wider extension of ERL policy with more practical execution solutions in developing economies.
中国实施生态红线（ERL）政策的背景是，在过去 40 年中，为了服务于快速经济增长，自然资源被过度开发，导致生态系统退化，人们的健康可能受到影响。由于第二产业是快速增长的贡献源，也是威胁自然环境和公共健康的威胁源，因此，ERL 的划定可以作为一种法律限制，迫使各行业控制排放并升级产业结构。本文通过中国四个省份的 ERL 试点方案，对产业结构和居民健康的改善效果进行了事后政策评估。采用双重差分（DID）方法，估计结果表明：（1）产业升级效应存在，但程度较小，因为 ERL 政策普遍仅将第三产业的产出提高了 0.033%，对第三产业与第二产业的比例几乎没有任何促进作用；（2）总体而言，ERL 政策实施后，居民健康状况显著改善了 1.029%，且随着时间的推移呈现出增强的趋势；（3）在四个试点省份中，有三个省份的健康促进效应相似，而四个省份之间的产业升级效应存在很大的异质性。这些实证结果可能为发展中经济体更广泛地推广 ERL 政策提供参考，并提供更实际的执行解决方案。
