Metadata record for Data and Code for: The effect of leaded gasoline on elderly mortality: Evidence from regulatory exemptions
120128
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
ICPSR metadata records are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
V1
Data and Code for: The effect of leaded gasoline on elderly mortality: Evidence from regulatory exemptions
120128
http://doi.org/10.3886/E120128V1
Alex Hollingsworth
Ivan Rudik
Please see full citation.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.
Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
Hollingsworth, Alex, and Rudik, Ivan. Data and Code for: The effect of leaded gasoline on elderly mortality: Evidence from regulatory exemptions. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2021. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-07-20. https://doi.org/10.3886/E120128V1
lead
air pollution
mortality
I00 Health, Education, and Welfare: General
I18 Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
Q53 Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
Leaded gasoline is still used globally for aviation and automotive racing. Exploiting regulatory exemptions and a novel quasi-experiment, we find that leaded gasoline use in racing increases ambient lead, elevated blood lead rates, and elderly mortality. The mortality estimates indicate that each gram of lead added to gasoline exceeds $1,100 in damages. Our setting allows us to rule out potential confounders, such as correlated pollutants or socioeconomic status. We provide the first causal estimates linking adult mortality to leaded gasoline, highlight the value of banning on-road leaded gasoline, and present policy-relevant cost estimates at the lowest ambient levels to date.