Fan Luqing, Li Xiaojia, Koizumi Naoru
School of Finance and Accounting, Henan University of Animal Husbandry and Economy, Zhengzhou, PR China.
Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA.
Heliyon. 2024 Jun 24;10(13):e33523. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e33523. eCollection 2024 Jul 15.
How does government spending on environmental protection benefit people's health? The current paper analyzed 2010 and 2018 data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) database to measure the impact of province-level environmental regulations on the health of local population. The study also applied the Alkire Foster method to develop the multidimensional health poverty (MHP) score, a new index intended to measure the health status of individuals in a holistic manner. Our results indicated that more fiscal spending on environmental regulation could improve health of the local population, especially among low-income population living in the rural areas. Further, the size of health benefit differs by the type of environmental regulation. More specifically, regulations focusing on preventing environmental pollution can achieve more sizable health benefits than remedial ones. Finally, fine inhalable particle (PM) has the largest mediating effect on the relationship between environmental regulation and public health. These results provide several policy implications, which highlight the importance of: scaling up fiscal environmental expenditure and optimizing the structure of environmental expenditure with more emphasis on rural areas where more low-income population are located; shifting from ex-post accountability to ex-ante prevention; and strengthening regional cooperation in environmental protection among local governments, and establishing a cross-regional coordination mechanism.
政府在环境保护方面的支出如何有益于民众健康？本文分析了中国家庭追踪调查（CFPS）数据库2010年和2018年的数据，以衡量省级环境规制对当地居民健康的影响。该研究还应用了阿尔基尔·福斯特方法来制定多维健康贫困（MHP）得分，这是一个旨在全面衡量个人健康状况的新指标。我们的结果表明，更多的财政支出用于环境规制能够改善当地居民的健康，尤其是农村地区的低收入人群。此外，健康效益的大小因环境规制类型而异。更具体地说，侧重于预防环境污染的规制比补救性规制能带来更大的健康效益。最后，细颗粒物（PM）对环境规制与公众健康之间的关系具有最大的中介作用。这些结果提供了若干政策启示，突出了以下方面的重要性：加大财政环境支出规模，优化环境支出结构，更加关注低收入人群集中的农村地区；从事后问责转向事前预防；加强地方政府间的环境保护区域合作，并建立跨区域协调机制。
