Objective and subjective measures of air pollution and self-rated health: the evidence from Chile

The literature exploring individual differences in self-rated health has grown fast in recent years. Self-rated health (SRH) is a good indicator of general health status. This empirical study explores the association between outdoor air pollution and SRH in Chile. This type of analysis is infrequent in Latin America.

We used objective and subjective air pollution measures. The first corresponds to PM_2.5, and the latter to the perception of a high level of air pollution. Drawing on data from two independent and repeated nationwide surveys over the period 2006–2017 at the individual level in Chile, we performed repeated cross-sectional analyses for each year of survey application. Ordered Logit (OL) and Logit (L) multivariate models were used to investigate the association between SRH and air pollution measures, considering other socioeconomic and demographic covariates.

We found that the higher is the level of air pollution, the lower the SRH in Chile, regardless of whether air pollution is physically measured or perceived by respondents. The results were consistent over the years in the sign and significance of regression coefficients using two surveys and two forms of the outcome variable.

Our findings add evidence that air pollution is a relevant determinant of SRH. In addition, they show that subjective measures of air pollution can be as reliable as physical measures in the analysis of the association between air pollution and human health.