World Oil Prices and Child Health

Yale Political Science graduate student Brian Fried and I have a new working paper looking at how fluctuations in world fuel prices impact child respiratory health. Here is the abstract:

Acute respiratory infections secondary to indoor air pollution from the use biomass fuels such as wood, dung and crop residues, are an important but under-explored cause of morbidity and mortality among children in the developing world. Designing policies to address this issue requires an understanding of the determinants of household fuel choice. This study explores one particular determinant, fluctuations in world fuel prices, which impact the local prices of clean-burning fuels such as liquid propane gasoline (LPG). Using a rich, nationally representative survey dataset from Guatemala, we explored the association between shocks to world fuel prices, measures of household biomass fuel use, and the respiratory health of children under the age of six. Our core finding was that a $1 (3.6%) increase in the (one week lagged) world oil price was associated with nearly a 3 percentage point increase in the likelihood of a child under the age of six experiencing respiratory symptoms. This association is likely driven by changes in household fuel use: increases in oil prices were associated with increases in the time spent cooking by the child’s mother and by the likelihood that the household collected firewood, both of which indicate a switch to biomass fuels. In addition, the fuel price effect on child respiratory health was strongest among very young children, who are more dependent on their mothers and therefore are more exposed to cooking smoke, and was nonexistent in areas that did not have markets for LPG, where substitution across clean and dirty fuels is not possible. Our results have important implications for policies aimed at reducing the burden of disease from respiratory illnesses secondary to exposure to pollutants from biomass fuels.