Beyond birth: The medium-term health impact of prenatal exposure to air pollution

Abstract

We investigate the medium-term health effects of prenatal exposure to moderate air pollution by matching satellite $P{M}_{10}$ concentration estimates with longitudinal data on hospitalisations and filled prescriptions for the universe of live births in a large Italian region. We employ exogenous variation in $P{M}_{10}$ in a multiple fixed-effects model to show that prenatal exposure to pollution leads to worse birth outcomes and to more hospitalisations and filled prescriptions in the first 10 years of life, especially at the bottom health quantiles. We use these estimates to quantify the monetary cost of prenatal exposure to air pollution.