with Emeline Lequy-Flahault, Marion Leroutier, Hélène Ollivier and Aurélien Saussay
We quantify the long-term societal costs of exposure to ambient air pollution. Leveraging detailed residential histories, we construct novel individual-level measures of cumulative exposure to air pollution in France. We exploit the large-scale shut-down of polluting power plants that took place in the 1980s, following the transition to nuclear energy, as a natural experiment to investigate the consequences of permanent air quality improvements on educational, employment and health outcomes. This project advances the literature by focusing on cumulative rather than short-term exposure, examining a broad set of educational, employment, and health outcomes, and applying quasi-experimental methods to produce plausibly unbiased estimates of air pollution’s societal costs.
with Olivier Allais, Philippe Caillou, Cyriaque Rousselot and Florian Yger
We assess the adverse impact of residential pesticide diffusion on residents living close to agricultural lands, exposed to pesticides via spray drift and volatilisation beyond the treated areas. This population is largely absent in studies to date. We exploit sensitive health data in combination with newly available data on pesticide pollution. For the sake of a clear focus, we will rely on the body of knowledge relating the exposure to some molecules at precise stages of the pregnancy, to the impaired development of specific cognitive and biological systems. Accordingly, the study will focus on the short and medium-term pesticide impact on newborns and children. We use quasi-experimental methods and new machine learning approaches for causal inference to face the main challenges of non-linearity of the effects, high dimensionality of the potential causes (cocktail effect), data incompleteness, and hidden confounding factors.
with Christoph Strupat and Paula von Haaren
This study investigates whether access to healthcare can mitigate the adverse effects of in-utero exposure to climate shocks—specifically droughts and floods—on early childhood nutritional outcomes across 34 sub-Saharan African countries. Using geocoded microdata from the Demographic and Health Surveys (1986–2018), combined with high-resolution environmental and health systems data, we estimate the impact of climate stress during gestation on child stunting, wasting, and underweight. We exploit spatial and temporal variation in climate conditions and healthcare access—measured by travel time to facilities and service quality—to identify causal pathways. Results from interaction models and subgroup analyses offer new insights into the role of health systems as a climate resilience mechanism, particularly for vulnerable populations. This is the first multi-country study in sub-Saharan Africa to jointly analyze climate risk, healthcare access, and child health in a unified empirical framework, directly informing global debates on human development under climate change.
with Hanna Schwank, Svenja Hippel, Jacqueline Lorenzen, Susanne Bell and Kathrin Hörschelmann
This study examines the medium- and long-term socioeconomic impacts of the 2021 flood in the Ahr Valley, with a focus on income and wealth inequalities. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we compare affected and unaffected households before and after the disaster to assess whether the flood exacerbated or reduced existing disparities. We also analyze how individual responses—such as relocation or access to public aid—and sociodemographic factors like age, gender, and education influence recovery trajectories. Beyond economic outcomes, the project investigates how differential exposure and recovery experiences affect attitudes toward climate adaptation and mitigation policies, perceptions of fairness, political trust, and social cohesion. By identifying mechanisms through which disasters shape inequality, the study provides evidence-based recommendations for equitable and effective reconstruction policies, aiming to strengthen regional resilience and inform responses to future extreme weather events.
with Olivier Allais and Antoine Nebout
We investigate whether individual preferences such as attitudes towards risk, time and ambiguity are correlated with an individual’s exposure to air pollution through her choice of residence and how this impacts health outcomes. For this, we add a module with questions concerning individual preferences for the new wave of data collection of the French cohort study CONSTANCES. This project is currently at the data collection stage.
This study estimates the short-term healthcare costs of exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) in France, where pollution levels are well below current European Union air quality standards. Using administrative data on healthcare expenditure for a representative population sample from 2015 to 2018, combined with high-resolution geospatial data on pollution and meteorological conditions, I implement an instrumental variable strategy that exploits exogenous variation in pollution driven by altitude weather patterns. I find that even moderate increases in PM significantly raise weekly healthcare costs, with estimated effects two to six times larger than those found in prior studies. Effects are observed across all age groups and in various medical specialties, including cardiology, pulmonology, and neurology. The findings suggest a concave dose-response relationship, with larger marginal effects at lower pollution levels. Aligning pollution concentrations with the WHO’s 2021 guideline could lead to annual savings of {6.44-8.67} billion, which far exceeds estimated abatement costs. These results provide a strong economic justification for more ambitious air quality regulations.
Full text available here ECONtribute Podcast (in German) University of Bonn Hypothese Podcast (in German)
This study sheds new light on the impact of couple separation on household living standards by considering the effects of separation on measures reflecting the adequacy of food consumption in addition to more commonly studied income and expenditure measures. Using an event study approach with panel data from France, I examine changes in household disposable income, food expenditure and food quantities purchased, diet quality and household member’s body weight at the time of separation and up to eight years later, compared to a control group of households that did not separate. Disposable income, food expenditure and quantities purchased adjusted for household size fall by around 20%-25% after separation and until the end of the observation window. The ex-partner’s body mass index (weight for height measure) falls by 1.5% in the first three years after separation and diet quality worsens. A possible interpretation of the results is that living standards fall to the point where households cannot maintain a minimum level of consumption to meet their dietary needs, resulting in measurable weight loss.
with Marie-Christine Boutron-Ruault, Marie-Aline Charles, Olivier Allais and Guy Fagherazzi
The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) framework suggests that early-life experiences affect long-term health outcomes. We tested this hypothesis by estimating the long-run effects of exposure to World War II-related food deprivation during childhood and adolescence on the risk of suffering from hypertension and type 2 diabetes at adulthood for 90,226 women from the French prospective cohort study E3N. We found that the experience of food deprivation during early-life was associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes (+0.7%, 95% CI: 0.073–1.37%) and hypertension (+2.6%, 95% CI: 0.81–4.45%). Effects were stronger for individuals exposed at younger ages. Exposed individuals also achieved lower levels of education, slept less, and were more frequently smokers than unexposed individuals. These results are compatible with both the latency and the pathway models proposed in the DOHaD framework which theorise the association between early life exposure and adult health through both a direct link and an indirect link where changes in health determinants mediate health outcomes.
with Olivier Allais and Pascal Leroy
We estimate the impact of retirement on food expenditure and food quantities purchased, using detailed home-scan panel data on food purchases and household characteristics in France. We identify a causal relationship by exploiting the French legal minimum age for retirement as an exogenous shock to retirement behavior. Upon retirement, households significantly decrease their expenditure on food and the amount of food purchased. Households with lower pre-retirement income appear to be more severely affected. Our results indicate that the decrease in food quantities purchased at the aggregate level is driven by a decline in purchases of food from animal origins. A reduced consumption of animal based food products is likely to undermine the diet balance of retirees.