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Short-Term and Long-Term Impacts of Air Pollution Control on China’s Economy

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Abstract

To deal with severe air pollution arising from rapid development, a series of air pollution control policies have been implemented in China. Previous literature has explored the short-term economic impacts of air pollution control, but the long-term economic impacts, which can better reflect the effectiveness of air pollution control, have received less attention. This paper has constructed an integrated assessment framework combining a multi-sectoral computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, air quality estimation module, and health impact module, to explore the short-term (2016) and long-term (2030) impacts of air pollution control on China’s economy, by setting 2015 as the base year. The possible future air pollution reduction scenarios were set based on the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan (FYP13) proposed by the Chinese government. Our results have shown that air pollution control would harm China’s economy and such adverse effects would be increased by stricter pollution reduction targets. Taking the health benefits of air pollution control into account can effectively alleviate the GDP losses, and even reverse them into economic benefits in the long term. Compared with business-as-usual (BAU) scenario (no policy constraints on SO2 and NOx emissions), the impact of air pollution control on GDP in the TAC_VIII scenario (emission reduction targets of 20% for SO2 and NOx are set every five years after 2015) would change from a loss of 1.20% in 2016 to an increase of 0.28% in 2030. Our results can provide policy implications for the optimization of China’s air emissions control in the future.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the authors.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 71904088), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant no. BK20190780), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no.71874078).

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Author notes

  1. Zhengjie Chen & Bing Zhang

    Present address: Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Atmospheric Environment and Equipment Technology (CICAEET), Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, China

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, PR China

    Zhengjie Chen, Beibei Liu & Bing Zhang

  2. Business School, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, PR China

    Feng Wang

  3. Development Institute of Jiangbei New Area, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, PR China

    Feng Wang

  4. The Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies, Nanjing, 210093, PR China

    Beibei Liu

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  1. Zhengjie Chen
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Correspondence to Bing Zhang.

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Chen, Z., Wang, F., Liu, B. et al. Short-Term and Long-Term Impacts of Air Pollution Control on China’s Economy. Environmental Management 70, 536–547 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-022-01664-1

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