@article{49dd2cc4af64443f818b80e6a32074f9,
title = "Air Pollution and the Labor Market: Evidence from Wildfire Smoke",
abstract = "We study how air pollution impacts the U.S. labor market by analyzing the effects of drifting wildfire smoke. We link satellite-based smoke plume data with labor market outcomes to estimate that an additional day of smoke exposure reduces quarterly earnings by about 0.1\%. Extensive margin responses, including employment reductions and labor force exits, explain 13\% of the overall earnings losses. The implied welfare costs from lost earnings due to air pollution exposure is on par with standard valuations of the mortality burden. The findings highlight the importance of labor market channels in air pollution policy responses.",
keywords = "air pollution, wildfires, labor market",
author = "Mark Borgschulte and David Molitor and Zou, \{Eric Yongchen\}",
note = "We thank David Card, Olivier Desch\textbackslash{}u00EAnes, Don Fullerton, Michael Greenstone, Matthew Kotchen, Darren Lubotsky, Max Moritz, Edson Severnini, and seminar participants at the American Economic Association Annual Meetings, Carnegie Mellon, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the IZA Conference on Labor Market Effects of Environmental Policies, the Midwestern Economics Association Annual Meeting, the National Tax Association Annual Meeting, the NBER EEE Program Meeting, the Population Association of America Annual Meeting, the Society of Labor Economists Annual Meeting, the University of California at Davis, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Michigan, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for helpful comments and suggestions, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for financial support. Yuqing Han, Yifan Wang, and Minh Joo Yi provided excellent research assistance. Molitor acknowledges support by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers R01AG053350 and R01AG073365; the content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.",
year = "2024",
month = nov,
doi = "10.1162/rest\_a\_01243",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "106",
pages = "1558--1575",
journal = "Review of Economics and Statistics",
issn = "0034-6535",
publisher = "MIT Press Journals",
number = "6",
}