The Research On The Impact Of Environmental Regulation On Employment

With the extensive economic growth model,China is facing increasingly serious environmental pollution.As the world’s largest emitter of sulfur dioxide,only 99 out of 338 cities at or above the prefectural level reached the standard of ambient air quality,exceeding 70 percent of the total,according to the 2017 ecological and environmental status bulletin.The deterioration of environmental pollution not only restricts the sustainable economic growth of our country,but also brings huge hidden trouble to the healthy life of the residents.The Chinese government has introduced a series of environmental regulation measures to reduce environmental pollution emissions,improve environmental quality and avoid the “pollution first,treatment later” of developed countries.At the same time,China’s economy is undergoing a period of transformation and adjustment.A series of pro blems,such as downward pressure on the economy,structural adjustment and overcapacity,have led to a rising potential risk of overall unemployment.However,the current “13th five-year plan” has proposed to continue to strengthen the ecological environme nt comprehensive treatment and promote employment of the two core tasks.On the one hand,the increasingly serious pollution for the government is bound to improve environmental regulation,on the other hand as vital to people’s livelihood,employment is the most basic economic development support,if the ascension of environmental regulation in improving the quality of the environment as well as to promote employment,so for the completion of tasks of the current two core is important.Therefore,it is nec essary to discuss and analyze the relationship between environmental regulation and employment.In order to explore whether strict environmental regulation policies can achieve a win-win situation between environmental protection and employment,this paper takes the implementation of “two control zones” as the policy impact of environmental regulation intensity change,and through the construction of panel data sets of 286 prefecture-level cities from 1994 to 2010,analyzes the impact of enhanced environmental regulation intensity on employment by using double difference method.The research finds that,on average,environmental regulation policy can achieve a win-win situation between pollution control and employment.The environmental effect and the employment effect are not mutually beneficial.On the contrary,the environmental regulation has effectively improved the regional employment level,and the “double dividend” exists in China.The marginal effect of “two control zones” on regional employment is characterized by growth and then decline over time,and shows obvious heterogeneity among different regions and industries.Specifically,the environmental regulation policy has a continuous and significant positive promoting effect on the employment level of the secondary and tertiary industries and the eastern region,but it has significantly reduced the employment level of the primary industry,and there is no evidence to show that it has a significant effect on the employment in the central and western regions.In addition,the impact of environmental regulation on employment not only has strong heterogeneity in time,space and industry,but also has significant differences between different control areas of acid rain and sulfur dioxide.Among them,the environmental regulation in the acid rain control area is mainly manifested as the promotion of employment,while in the sulfur dioxide control area is mainly manifested as the crowding out of employment.