Matthew C Klein, Columnist

Choking on the Cost of China's Toxic Air

Boosting industrial output while ruining the environment and poisoning your population isn’t a good long-term plan.

April 8, 2014 at 9:35 PM UTC

Matthew C. Klein writes for Bloomberg View about the economy and financial markets. He previously wrote for the Economist magazine and its economics blog, Free Exchange. Before that, Klein was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he spent more than two years studying the history of the Federal Reserve and the intellectual history of monetary economics for an upcoming book by Sebastian Mallaby. He also worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he studied the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and advised institutional investors on asset-liability management. Klein has a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University. Originally from Chicago, he lives in New York.

China is struggling to take account of the costs of severe air pollution, a result of rapid growth and lax regulations. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

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Governments sometimes support rapid growth in manufacturing and construction by going easy on polluters. But the short-term benefits probably aren't worth the trouble once you properly account for the long-term damage.

Two recent stories out of China are useful reminders of this point. Here is Bloomberg News describing the reluctance of expatriates to work in China because of the risks pollution poses to their health and that of their families: