Effect of Coal Production on Chronic Respiratory Disease Mortality Rates in Kentucky Between 1980 and 2016

Current public health literature has strongly associated coal mining with negative health and environmental impacts, ranging from chronic conditions to air pollution. However, existing research hasn’t explored the effects of coal mining on specific health indicators over an extended period (> 30 years) at the county level, data otherwise necessary to support policymakers when designing effective energy policies to transition away from coal. My paper aimed to bridge this gap by creating a Panel Vector Autoregression model and subsequent impulse response functions in R to model the impact of increases in coal production on chronic respiratory mortality rates in Kentucky. My findings suggest that increased coal production may exacerbate chronic respiratory illnesses in the short term (within 2 years), after which respiratory mortality rates plateau, possibly due to other factors (e.g., genetics or inadequate health insurance). These findings underscore the need for policymakers to expedite the transition away from coal and refrain from permitting the construction of new mines or facilities that would increase coal production. Furthermore, my model’s strong impulse response functions lay the foundation for modeling the short and long-term health effects of changes in coal production, thereby assisting legislators and researchers in designing similar models for energy policy proposals.