Impacts of coal smoke on infant mortality: Evidence from industrializing Japan

Abstract This study investigates the health consequences of coal smoke during Japan's early industrialization. Using fixed‐effects models and a prefecture‐level panel dataset on actual coal consumption and infant mortality from 1899 to 1910, this study finds that higher coal consumption was positively associated with infant mortality. The baseline estimate suggests that a one‐standard‐deviation increase in the log of coal consumption was associated with approximately 2.1 additional infant deaths per 1000 live births, and that the growth in coal use was associated with an increase in infant mortality equivalent to approximately 11.8 per cent of the overall rise in infant mortality during the sample period. Further estimates using infant deaths by age interval show that this association was weak during the neonatal period but became more pronounced during the post‐neonatal period, particularly from 1 month to under 6 months after birth. These findings suggest that coal‐based industrialization carried health costs in a non‐Western industrializing economy and that the timing of pollution‐related infant mortality differed from that observed in modern contexts.