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The Needs of the Army: Using Compulsory Relocation in the Military to Estimate the Effect of Air Pollutants on Children's Health
- Journal of Human Resources
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Volume 45, Number 3, Summer 2010
- pp. 549-590
- 10.1353/jhr.2010.0016
- Article
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Recent research suggests that pollution has a large impact on asthma and other respiratory and cardiovascular conditions. But this relationship and its implications are not well understood. I use changes in location due to military transfers, which occur entirely to satisfy the needs of the army, to identify the causal impact of pollution on children's respiratory hospitalizations. I use individual-level data of military families and their dependents, matched at the zip code level with pollution data, for the period 1989-95. I find that for military children only ozone appears to have an adverse effect on health, although not for infants.