Our aim is to quantify more comprehensively the long-term societal costs of air pollution by jointly examining the effects on several dimensions of human capital, including educational attainment, wages and health expenditures due to effects on overall health. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, electricity generation in France shifted from being mostly coal-and-oil-based to being mostly nuclear-based. The closure of polluting oil and coal power plants led to permanent decreases in pollution concentrations locally. We will study this transition and quantify the long-term and cumulative effects of permanent air quality improvements.
