健康中国战略背景下空气污染的心理健康效应

Mental health effects of air pollution in the context of Healthy China Initiative

健康中国行动(2019—2030年)》明确要求努力形成有利于健康的生态环境,提高人民健康水平,加快开展心理健康促进行动和健康环境促进行动。该研究利用2010—2018年中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)数据与受访者所在县(区)的年度空气污染数据和气象数据进行匹配,通过双重差分法(DID)计算2013年底实施的“大气十条”政策引起的区域空气污染的外生变化,再利用二阶段最小二乘法(2SLS)识别空气污染对居民心理健康的影响。研究发现,空气污染显著地降低了居民心理健康水平,其中,县级层面1μg/m^(3)的PM_(2.5)污染浓度的上升将会显著降低居民主观幸福感得分8.17%并加重居民抑郁情绪指数3.88%。进一步的机制分析表明,空气污染主要通过恶化居民身体健康水平,减少居民运动锻炼行为并增加肥胖风险进而对心理健康产生负向影响。此外,分析空气污染对不同人群心理健康影响的异质性差异后发现,男性群体、年轻人群体、低教育群体和城市居民受空气污染的负面心理健康效应会更大。该研究结论是对现有分析空气污染健康效应文献的有效补充,同时还反映出目前基于健康层面对空气污染成本的评估可能大大低估了空气污染对主观幸福感和精神健康的影响所产生的其他社会经济成本。中国需要进一步加强大气污染防治工作,打赢蓝天保卫战。

The Healthy China Action Plan (2019-2030) clearly requires China to make efforts to foster a healthy ecological environment and improve people’s health.It also highlights the need to accelerate actions to promote mental health and a healthy environment.Combining the data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2010 to 2018 with annual air pollution data and meteorological data,this study utilized the difference-in-differences model to calculate the exogenous changes of regional air pollution caused by the implementation of the Action Plan of Air Pollution Prevention and Control (APAPPC) at the end of 2013,and then used the two-stage least square method (2SLS) to identify the impact of air pollution on residents’mental health.The results showed that air pollution significantly reduced residents’mental health level.Specifically,an increase of 1 ug/m^(3)PM_(2.5) pollution concentration at the county level would significantly reduce residents’subjective well-being score by 8.17% and residents’ depression index by 3.88%.Further mechanism analysis showed that air pollution had a negative impact on mental health mainly through worsening residents’ physical health level,reducing residents’exercise behavior in daily life and increasing the risk of obesity.In addition,the heterogeneous results showed that the negative mental health effects of air pollution were greater for male groups,young age groups,low-education groups and urban residents.This article is an effective supplement to the existing literature,and reflects that current estimates of the health costs of air pollution may be far underestimated,which requires China to further strengthen air pollution prevention and control to win the battle against air pollution.