Air Quality Degradation: Can Economics Help in Measuring its Welfare Effects? A Review of Economic Valuation Studies

Abstract

Air quality affects human’s well being in various ways. Air providing the most important life-support function sustains human health and enables the existence of all ecosystems. Although clean air is considered to be a basic requirement for human health and well-being, economic development and population growth has resulted in a considerable deterioration of air quality. Human activities like the intensification of agriculture, industrialization, increasing energy use, the burning of fossil fuels and the increase in transportation have resulted to a rising cocktail of poisonous pollutants which impose many adverse effects on environment as a whole, our human health and life expectancy, ecosystems services, biodiversity, agricultural crops and building structures.