Air Pollution’s Impact on the Economic, Social, Medical, and Industrial Injury Environments in China

• Main Authors: Zhong Fang, Pei-Ying Wu, Yi-Nuo Lin, Tzu-Han Chang, Yung-ho Chiu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Healthcare
• Subjects: medical treatment; work injury; air pollution; environmental efficiency; meta-DDF
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/9/3/261

In this era of rapid economic development, it is inevitable that economic activities eventually cause serious damage to the environment’s air quality, making it the focus of global public health. If the treatment efficiency of medical accidents can be improved, then this can significantly stabilize society and improve production efficiency. Past research has mainly focused on work safety and health issues, seldom discussing economic, social, medical, and environmental pollution issues together, and, most generally, adopted static methods that fail to recognize how air pollution affects the overall economy, society, medical care, and external environment. In order to more deeply understand the changes among social, economic activities, and environmental issues due to air pollution, this study proposes a meta-two-stage undesirable dynamic DDF (Direction Distance Function) that, under an exogenous model, divides the 30 provinces of China into high-income regions and middle-income regions and explores the economic, social, medical, and environmental efficiencies between the two areas to resolve the lack of related static analyses. The empirical results are as follows. (1) The AQI (air quality index) significantly impacts the efficiency of medical injuries in various regions. (2) When the AQI is considered, the medical insurance expenditure efficiency score value of high-income areas is lower than the value without the AQI. (3) When the AQI is considered, the efficiency value of the number of work injury insurance benefits in the middle-income area is lower than the efficiency value without the AQI.