Research On The Impact Of Indoor And Outdoor Air Pollution On The Cognitive Function Of Middle-Aged And Older Adults In China

At present,with the continuous decrease of fertility rate and the continuous increase of average life expectancy,“aging”has become the new normal of China’s economic and social development.The plan of Health China 2030 clearly points out that the law of scientific development in the field of health lies in the adherence to the principle,which is“prevention first and combining prevention with control”.Therefore,exploration in theory and practice is needed to correctly identify possible environmental health risk factors,safeguard the health of middle-aged and older adults,and further promote the high-quality development of environmental health work;accelerate the suitable aging transformation of society.In view of this,based on domestic large micro database,this thesis takes the cognitive health of middle-aged and older adults as the entry point while the causal framework is constructed to explore the specific impact of indoor and outdoor air pollution on it.At the same time,This thesis identifies the population that are vulnerable to indoor and out air pollution based on multiple aspects.Specific research contents are as follows:First of all,in order to clarify the main body in the research process,this thesis defines the concepts related to cognitive function and indoor/outdoor air pollution.At the same time,this thesis introduces the measurement methods for cognitive function which are commonly used in the academic circle and clarify the research thread of health effects of air pollution at home and abroad.The results indicates that most of the existing literature related to the health effects of indoor/outdoor air pollution only focus on the the perspective of physical health.Although some scholars in environmental health and other fields have conducted detailed studies on cognitive health in recent years,the corresponding empirical results are commonly limited to the level of correlation,thus the failure to further discuss the potential causal relationship between indoor/outdoor air pollution and cognitive function.Secondly,this thesis explores the causal relationship between outdoor air pollution and cognitive function of middle-aged and older adults in China by constructing a two-stage least square regression model.The results show that each unit increase in outdoor PM_2.5directly leads to and an averagely 0.1128 unit decrease in cognitive function scores of middle-aged and older adults,the corresponding empirical results remain consistent after multiple robustness checks.Further empirical analysis indicates that the impacts of outdoor air pollution on cognitive function of middle-aged and older adults are varied in different individuals and different regions.Thirdly,by the fact that the negative correlation between indoor air pollution and cognitive function has been confirmed in existing literature,but only a few scholars have conducted detailed discussion on the possible causal relationship between indoor air pollution and cognitive function.In this thesis,household solid fuel is taken as the proxy of indoor air pollution while a propensity score matching model is constructed to make a preliminary causal inference between indoor air pollution and cognitive function based on observable variables.Furthermore,reasonable instrumental variables are selected and endogenous switching models are constructed to eliminate the sample selection bias as much as possible.The results show that there is a negative causal relationship between indoor air pollution and cognitive function of middle-aged and older adults,it is worth mentioning that this negative relationship is more obvious in middle-aged and older women and people who are over 70 years old.Finally,by combing the empirical results,actual energy structure and the development situation of society and economy in China,several relevant suggestions to promote high-quality development of environmental health work are proposed:the cognitive health of middle-aged and older adults should be taken as a key factor in the future work of environmental health while the control of outdoor air pollution and other pollution factors with high health risks should be strengthened to the maximum extent to prevent and control the consequential health hazards.More attention should be paid to the indoor air pollution and a detailed plan is needed to identify the key factors and key directions in the future control process of indoor air pollution.Differentiated policies should be formulated for people who are vulnerable to indoor/outdoor air pollution,such as establishing and improving a classification protect system.In order to reduce indoor air pollution and protect the health rights and interests of Chinese citizens to the greatest extent,continuous improvements in the construction of clean energy infrastructure and accelerations in the phase of disuse of highly polluting household solid fuel are needed.There are 17 figures,31 tables and 237 references in this thesis.