Air pollution and mortality rates: A note on Lave and Seskin's pooling of cross-section and time-series data

In “Air Pollution and Human Health” (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1977) Lester Lave and Eugene Seskin report the results of regressions which suggest a strong association between air pollution and mortality rates. This note questions assumptions made by Lave and Seskin which underlie their -estimation of a single-equation model using pooled cross-section and time-series data. If, in fact, these assumptions cannot be made, the association between air pollution and mortality rates appears considerably weakened, but it still appears to be significant.