Clean rides, healthy lives: the impact of electric vehicle adoption on air quality and infant health

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w34278

This paper provides the first nationwide evidence on how electric vehicle (EV) adoption has improved both air quality and child health. We assemble a rich dataset from 2010–2021 that links county-level EV registrations to measures of air pollution, birth outcomes, and emergency department visits. The endogeneity of EV adoption is addressed using two complementary strategies: Two-way fixed effects and instrumental variables (IV). The IV exploits the staggered rollout of Alternative Fuel Corridors as a source of exogenous variation in charging infrastructure that affected EV adoption. The estimates show that greater EV penetration significantly reduces nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a key pollutant linked to vehicular emissions. These improvements in air quality yield significant health benefits, including reductions in very low birth weight and very premature births, as well as fewer asthma-related emergency department visits among children ages 0 to 5. This is true even when potentially offsetting increases in pollution from the electricity generation needed to power EVs are accounted for. The benefits are higher in the high-pollution counties with Alternative Fuel Corridors, where baseline exposures are greatest. The resulting reductions in very low birth weight births alone could generate annual benefits of $1.2 to $4.0 billion. These findings underscore the dual environmental and public health benefits of EV adoption.