مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد بررسی حسابداری هزینه های سلامت آلودگی هوا – الزویر 2018

Over the last three decades, rapid industrialization in China has generated an unprecedentedly high level of air pollution and associated health problems. Given that China accounts for one-fifth of the world population and suffers from severe air pollution, a comprehensive review of the indicators accounting for the health costs in relation to air pollution will benefit evidence-based and health-related environmental policy-making. This paper reviews the conventional static and the new dynamic approach adopted for air pollution-related health cost accounting in China and analyzes the difference between the two in estimating GDP loss. The advantages of adopting the dynamic approach for health cost accounting in China, with conditions guaranteeing its optimal performance are highlighted. Guidelines on how one can identify an appropriate approach for health cost accounting in China are put forward. Further, we outline and compare the globally-applicable and China-specific indicators adopted by different accounting methodologies, with their pros and cons being discussed. A comprehensive account of the available databases and methodologies for health cost accounting in China are outlined. Future directions to guide health cost accounting in China are provided. Our work provides valuable insights into future health cost accounting research in China. Our study has strengthen the view that the dynamic approach is comparatively more preferred than the static approach for health cost accounting in China, if more data is available to train the dynamic models and improve the robustness of the parameters employed. In addition, future dynamic model should address the socio-economic impacts, including benefits or losses of air pollution polices, to provide a more robust policy picture. Our work has laid the key principles and guidelines for selecting proper econometric approaches and parameters. We have also identified a proper estimation method for the Value of Life in China, and proposed the integration of engineering approaches, such as the use of deep learning and big data analysis for health cost accounting at the fine-grained level (city-district or sub-regional level). Our work has also identified the gap for more accurate health cost accounting at the fine-grained level in China, which will subsequently affect the quality of healthrelated air pollution policy decision-making at such levels, and the health-related quality of life of the citizens in China.

Introduction

Over the last three decades, rapid industrialization in China has caused significant air pollution and health challenges (Diamond, 2005; Lagorio, 2010; Lim, 2007). The mean annual PM2.5 concentration in China’s major cities reported to be 43 μg/m3 , had exceeded 4 folds based on the threshold of 10 μg/m3 annual mean concentration set by the World Health Organization in 2017 (Chan and Danzon, 2005; MEEPRC, 2017). Serious air pollution has created severe health risks (Dockery and Pope, 1994; Dockery et al., 1992, 1989), raising increasing concerns in China (Wang, 2016). People’s quality of life has deteriorated continuously with increasing rates of morbidity and mortality. Pollution has also affected tourism negatively, and triggered people to move out of the polluted cities in China (Liang and Zhao, 2015). Against such background, quantification of air pollution-related health costs is needed for reviewing how much air pollution in China has costed the health of its own citizens, and how serious the problem is, before any sound and justifiable health-related environmental policy measures can be designed. Thompson et al. has conducted a quantitative study and suggested that the costs of United State’s carbon policies could be offset by 26% to 1050% due to air pollution control policies in the states that improve air quality and reduce health costs, indicating those policies are worthy of implementation (Thompson et al., 2014). Another study in China has shown that various polluted provinces in China should closely cooperate in order to minimize the regional health costs due to PM2.5 (Wu et al., 2017). Given that China hosts one-fifth of the world’s population and is a key contributor to global air pollution (Kaiman, 2013), The beneficiaries of developing reliable and precise health cost accounting methodologies for China’s air pollution will not be restricted to Chinese policy-makers, but also researchers who are interested in air pollution-related health policy studies globally (OECD, 2014).