Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, MA 02134.
Department of Human Sciences, European University of Rome, Rome 00163, Italy.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Sep 17;121(38):e2401882121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2401882121. Epub 2024 Sep 9.
Although it is well documented that exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) increases the risk of several adverse health outcomes, less is known about its relationship with economic opportunity. Previous studies have relied on regression modeling, which implied strict assumptions regarding confounding adjustments and did not explore geographical heterogeneity. We obtained data for 63,165 US census tracts (86% of all census tracts in the United States) on absolute upward mobility (AUM) defined as the mean income rank in adulthood of children born to families in the 25th percentile of the national income distribution. We applied and compared several state-of-the-art confounding adjustment methods to estimate the overall and county-specific associations of childhood exposure to PM and AUM controlling for many census tract-level confounders. We estimate that census tracts with a 1 μg/m higher PM concentrations in 1982 are associated with a statistically significant 1.146% (95% CI: 0.834, 1.458) lower AUM in 2015, on average. We also showed evidence that this relationship varies spatially between counties, exhibiting a more pronounced negative relationship in the Midwest and the South.
虽然已有大量文献记录表明，细颗粒物（PM）暴露会增加多种不良健康后果的风险，但人们对其与经济机会之间的关系了解较少。先前的研究依赖于回归建模，该方法对混杂因素调整有严格的假设，并且没有探索地理异质性。我们获取了美国 63165 个普查区（占美国所有普查区的 86%）的绝对向上流动性（AUM）数据，AUM 定义为出生在全国收入分布第 25 百分位数家庭的孩子在成年时的平均收入排名。我们应用并比较了几种最先进的混杂因素调整方法，以在控制许多普查区层面混杂因素的情况下，估计儿童时期暴露于 PM 和 AUM 与 AUM 之间的总体和县级特定关联。我们估计，1982 年 PM 浓度每增加 1μg/m，2015 年 AUM 平均降低 1.146%（95%CI：0.834，1.458），这具有统计学意义。我们还发现了证据表明，这种关系在县之间存在空间差异，在中西部和南部地区表现出更明显的负相关关系。
