The Effect of Ecological Management on Regional Health Inequality

Ecological management has been implemented to improve individual well-being. However, it remains unclear whether this management has improved health inequality over time. Aiming to examine whether health inequality is caused by ecological management in China, we harnessed a macro-level dataset from 2001 to 2019 across 31 Chinese provinces—combined with gene and dietary culture data—and utilized a bilateral approach to pair provincial data. Empirical results of system Generalized Method of Moments (sys-GMM) estimations in benchmark and extensive models which suggest a negative and statistically significant causal effect of ecological management on health inequality. Specifically, ecological management contributes to decreasing the inequality in the population death rate, the death rate among pregnant women, the underweight newborn rate, the child malnutrition rate, and the infectious disease mortality. The results are robust to weak instruments in the sys-GMM setting and a delayed effect of ecological management. Additionally, the heterogeneity analysis shows that the causal effect of ecological management on decreasing regional health inequality is more significant and higher for subsamples in identical regions than in different regions.