WHEN glam rockers T-Rex released the song "Children of the Revolution" in 1972, the revolution they had in mind was not America's Clean Air Act. But two economists later calculated that about 1,300 extra one-year-old Americans were trying to stand up and walk at the end of that year. These babes survived because the 1970 law led them (and their mothers) to breathe in fewer sooty particles than they otherwise would have.
The analysis by Michael Greenstone, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Kenneth Chay, who is now at Brown University, in Rhode Island, was based on their previous study of air pollution and infant mortality during the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s. After an all-time peak in the number of American manufacturing jobs in 1979, the "total suspended particulates" count fell dramatically in the subsequent two years. Because it dropped more precipitously in some parts of America than in others, Dr Greenstone and Dr Chay were able to show that it caused infant survival to improve. They were then able to identify how many lives had been saved by the Clean Air A...
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