Julia Mink (Bonn University)
This paper quantifies the long-term economic costs of sustained exposure to ambient air pollution. We construct novel measures of individual lifetime exposure to pollution from French fossil fuel power plants over 1950–2022, accounting for residential mobility. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation generated by a government-led transition to nuclear energy in the 1980s, and subsequent phase-out of coal- and oil-fired power plants, we estimate the effects of early-life and cumulative electricity-related pollution exposure on adult employment, earnings, and health. We find that greater long-run exposure significantly reduces lifetime earnings, with effects partly mediated by adverse health impacts from exposure before age five. The implied benefits from this early French fossil fuel phase-out are substantial: within 20 kilometers of plants, average exposure to pollution leads to 4.5% lower lifetime annual wage.