How Energy Consumption and Pollutant Emissions Affect the Disparity of Public Health in Countries with High Fossil Energy Consumption

Abstract

Public health issues are a global focus, but recent research on the links between fossil energy consumption, pollutant emissions, and public health in different regions have presented inconsistent conclusions. In order to quantify the effect of fossil energy use and pollutant emissions on public health from the global perspective, this paper investigates 33 countries with high GDP and fossil energy consumption from 1995 to 2015 using a fixed effect model. Further, this paper utilizes heterogeneity analysis to characterize the disparity of countries with different features. Empirical results indicate that total fossil energy consumption is beneficial to the life expectancy of the population (LEP), but pollutant emissions (PM10 concentration and greenhouse gas scale) have a negative effect on LEP. Moreover, the heterogeneity test indicates that pollutant emissions lowers LEP in net energy importers more than in net energy exporters, and the effect of such emissions in low- and middle-income countries on public health is more harmful than that in high-income countries. These findings suggest that it is a greater priority for governments to strengthen the control of pollutant emissions through enhancing the efficiency of energy consumption, rather than by reducing its scale of use in low- and middle-income, and net energy importing countries. Additionally, governments also need to focus on the volatility of pollutant emissions in high-income countries with necessary control measures.