Economic losses due to health-related implications of air pollution were huge and incurred significant burdens towards healthcare providers. The objective of this study is to systematically review published literature on the financial implications of air pollution on health in Asia. Four databases: PubMed, Scopus, NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED), and Web of Science (WoS) were used to identify all the relevant articles. It was limited to all articles that had been published in the respected databases from January 2007 until March 2017. Twenty-four articles were included in this review. Five of the 24 studies (20.8%) reported financial implications of air pollution-related disease through value of statistical life (VOSL) which ranged from USD180 million to USD2.2 billion, six (25%) studies used cost of illness (COI) to evaluate air pollution-related morbidity and found that the cost ranged from USD5.4 million to USD9.1 billion. Another six studies (25%) used a combination of VOSL and COI for both mortality and morbidity valuation and found that the financial implications ranging from USD253 million to USD2.9 billion. Thirteen (54.2%) studies reported healthcare cost associated with both hospital admission and outpatient visit, five (20.1%) on hospital admission only, and one (4.2%) on outpatient visit only. Economic impacts of air pollution can be huge with significant deterioration of health among the Asians.
The main purpose of this work is to analyze the impact of environmental degradation proxied by CO2 emissions per capita along with some other explanatory variables namely energy use, trade, and human capital on economic growth in selected higher CO2 emissions economies namely China, the USA, India, and Japan. For empirical analysis, annual data over the period spanning between 1971 and 2013 are used. After using relevant and suitable tests for checking data properties, the panel fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) method is employed as an analytical technique for parameter estimation. The panel group FMOLS results reveal that almost all variables are statistically significant, whereby test rejects the null hypotheses of non cointegration, demonstrating that all variables play an important role in affecting the economic growth role across countries. Where two regressors namely CO2 emissions and energy use show significantly negative impacts on economic growth, for trade and human capital, they tend to show the significantly positive impact on economic growth. However, for the individual analysis across countries, the panel estimate suggests that CO2 emissions have a significant positive relationship with economic growth for China, Japan, and the USA, while it is found significantly negative in case of India. The empirical findings of the study suggest that appropriate and prudent policies are required in order to control pollution emerging from areas other than liquefied fuel consumption. The ultimate impact of shrinking pollution will help in supporting sustainable economic growth and maturation as well as largely improve society welfare.