SummaryPatients suffering from chronic lung disease who live in areas with high air pollution face the risk of an accelerated decline in lung health. They may seek to move to a new area with better air quality, whose health benefits can be approximated by interregional mortality differentials. But moving may come with monetary and non-monetary costs, such as search for a new job, loss of career, friends and children’s educational opportunities. For patients with low socio-economic status, monetary costs alone may be prohibitive. Moreover, competition for residences in areas with good air may drive up real estate prices and ration access by income class. We plan to use NAKO data, the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), and other data for Germany in order to study the empirical relationships between the relevant variables, especially between local prevalence of chronic lung diseases and mortality differences across regions as well as between individual lung disease burden, sociodemographic background and propensity to move to a place with lower air pollution. We further plan to test explanatory hypotheses on individual behavior changes in response to environmental risks (e.g. air pollution) and on the impact these responses may have on the speed of observed lifecycle declines in lung health.

Keywords Air-Quality Air-pollution Asthma COPD Environmental-Exposure Housing Real-estate Residential-Mobility Risk-factors Willingness-to-Pay

InstitutionsKiel Institute for the World Economy, Columbia University, Leibniz-Institut für Präventionsforschung und Epidemiologie - BIPS, Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology - BIPS, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), IUF - Leibniz Institut für umweltmedizinische Forschung