The heavy metal project

It is well documented that people with low socioeconomic status (SES) have worse health than those with high SES. One explanation is that children in low SES families are exposed to more harmful living conditions, such as exposure to pollution and toxic substances. Previous studies have focused on general air pollution and found that exposure leads to adverse health outcomes at birth. However, few studies have focused on long-term outcomes where we still do not know much about the consequences of environmental exposures in childhood on outcomes later in life and how the consequences may differ across SES of the parents. Our research program will fill this gap.

In this project, we will use rich Swedish longitudinal administrative data in combination with innovative empirical methods to estimate causal effects of mercury, cadmium and arsenic on economic outcomes over the life-cycle as well as investigate how the effects differs across individuals with different SES.

Researchers

Mattias Öhman
Linuz Aggeborn
Oscar Erixson
Jenny Jans (Stockholm university)
Per Johansson