AIRCRAFT NOISE, HEALTH, AND RESIDENTIAL SORTING: EVIDENCE FROM TWO QUASI‐EXPERIMENTS. (8th July 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Boes, Stefan; Nüesch, Stephan; Stillman, Steven
• Is Part Of: Health economics. Volume 22:Number 9(2013:Sep.)
• Page Start: 1037
• Page End: 1051
• Publication Date: 2013-07-08
• Subjects: Health -- noise pollution -- residential sorting -- fixed effects -- quasi‐experiments; Medical economics -- Periodicals; Economics, Medical -- Periodicals; Health Care Costs -- Periodicals; Health Policy -- economics -- Periodicals; Health Services -- economics -- Periodicals; 362.1
• DOI: 10.1002/hec.2948
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1057-9230

Abstract

SUMMARY: We explore two unexpected changes in flight regulations to estimate the causal effect of aircraft noise on health. Detailed measures of noise are linked with longitudinal data on individual health outcomes based on the exact address information. Controlling for individual heterogeneity and spatial sorting into different neighborhoods, we find that aircraft noise significantly increases sleeping problems and headaches. Models that do not control for such heterogeneity and sorting substantially underestimate the negative health effects, which suggests that individuals self‐select into residence based on their unobserved sensitivity to noise. Our study demonstrates that the combination of quasi‐experimental variation and panel data is very powerful for identifying causal effects in epidemiological field studies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.