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Urbanization and residents’ health: from the perspective of environmental pollution

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Abstract

The development of urbanization has important implications for the environment and the human health. However, it is still lacking a comprehensive analysis between urbanization, environmental pollution, and residents’ health based on a unified research system. In this study, we assessed the integrated level of urbanization by the entropy method based on the representative indicators. It has been found that there is a significant progress in the urbanization level in the provinces from 2005 to 2020. The impact of urbanization development on environmental pollution was analyzed using the system GMM (Generalized Method of Moments), and the results show an inverted U-shaped relationship between urbanization and environmental pollution. Fixed effect regression model analysis infers that urbanization has a dual impact on population health. Urbanization promotes residents’ health by improving medical conditions, but the environmental pollution caused by urbanization is harmful to residents’ health. This paper integrated urbanization, environmental pollution, and residents’ health into a research system to analyze the impact of urbanization on environmental pollution and residents’ health. Some policy recommendations have been proposed based on the research results for promoting high-quality development of urbanization, reducing environmental pollution, and improving residents’ health.

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The data and materials that support the findings of this study are openly available on request.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the Project of Liaoning Social Science Planning Fund (No. L22BGL003, No. L22BTJ001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environment, Liaoning University, Shenyang, 110036, China

    Congting Sun & Ying Wang

  2. School of Mathematics and Statistics, Liaoning University, Shenyang, 110036, China

    Zhichuan Zhu

Authors
  1. Congting Sun
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  2. Ying Wang
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  3. Zhichuan Zhu
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Contributions

Congting Sun: Conceptualization, supervision, formal analysis, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition. Ying Wang: Conceptualization, investigation, formal analysis, visualization. Zhichuan Zhu: Writing—review and editing, supervision, visualization.

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Correspondence to Zhichuan Zhu.

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Sun, C., Wang, Y. & Zhu, Z. Urbanization and residents’ health: from the perspective of environmental pollution. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 67820–67838 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-26979-2

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