Abstract

Air pollution, which generates negative effects on people’s health, is linked to 23% of deathsworldwide. Among the main air pollutants are particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), which causescardiovascular and respiratory diseases, affecting the whole community living in a sector exposed toemissions; and sulphur dioxide (SO2), which can cause severe effects even with short exposures. Basedon air pollution data obtained from National Air Quality Information System (SINCA) monitoringstations, meteorological information from the Meteorological Directorate of Chile, and socioeconomicinformation on income poverty level, multidimensional poverty level, unemployment, schooling, overcrowding and health, we constructed a data panel containing daily information at the communitylevel, from 2016 to 2019. Using three ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models, we studied therelationship between socioeconomic variables and each of the pollutants. Our results show that, ingeneral, there is a positive and significant relationship between the level of multidimensional povertyof a population and the totality of regional pollution levels; as well as a negative and significantrelationship between unemployment and the different pollution levels. Finally, there is a negative andsignificant relationship between the level of citizen’s education and pollution. The main objective ofthis study was to investigate the possible relationships between socio-economic variables and pollution,in order to generate evidence to aid implementation of environmental public policies.