Title: The Intergenerational Employment Dividend of Cleaner Air: Evidence from China's Air Quality Monitoring Rollout

Speaker: Yang Benjian, Associate Professor and Doctoral Supervisor, School of Economics, Jinan University. His research focuses on industrial economics, regional and urban economics and China’s economic development. His papers have been published in journals such as Journal of Economic Geography, Economic Research Journal and Management World. He has won the second and third prizes of Guangdong Provincial Philosophy and Social Sciences Outstanding Achievement Award, and presided over multiple national, provincial and ministerial research projects.

Abstract: China’s 2013–2015 air quality monitoring rollout sharply reduced ambient pollution across treated cities. We study how the resulting improvement reshapes the labor market outcomes of working-age adults in treated cities. The response is concentrated among labor–market entrants, for whom both labor–force participation and formal–sector employment rise by roughly 5 percentage points. Two reinforcing channels are consistent with this response. On the supply side, cleaner air improves parental health and cuts daily informal caregiving hours by roughly 70%, relaxing the scheduling constraint on formal–sector entry. On the demand side, firm entry rises by 11% and exit falls by 21%, concentrated in amenity–sensitive producer and consumer services rather than resource–bound industries. The implied annual labor-channel welfare gain is roughly $16 billion, additive to previously documented direct-health benefits of the same rollout.

Date & time: 05 June 2026, 09:30

Venue: B321, Zhixin Building, Central Campus, SDU