Countries by Adjusted savings: particulate emission damage (current US$)

Ranking 2021

Analysis

This metric measures the economic cost of air pollution exposure to a country's population. Particulate emissions damage is the damage due to exposure of a country's population to ambient concentrations of particulates measuring less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5), ambient ozone pollution, and indoor concentrations of PM2.5 in households cooking with solid fuels. Damages are calculated as foregone labor income due to premature death. Values are expressed in current US dollars as absolute totals, meaning larger, wealthier, and more populous countries tend to produce higher figures. The dataset covers 178 countries using World Bank indicator NY.ADJ.DPEM.CD, with 92.1% of entries drawn from the 2021 reference year and 98.9% of values sourced within the last seven years. All 100% of datapoints are classified as official quality.

The top of the ranking is dominated by the world's most populous and industrially active economies. China (rank 1) records $83.8 billion, followed by India (rank 2) at $36.8 billion and the United States (rank 3) at $15.5 billion. Nigeria (rank 4, $8.9 billion) and Pakistan (rank 5, $8.0 billion) rank higher than several large developed economies, consistent with high population exposure and solid-fuel cooking prevalence. Japan (rank 7, $3.8 billion), Germany (rank 10, $2.7 billion), and Saudi Arabia (rank 12, $2.7 billion) are the leading high-income countries outside the top six. The 20 most extreme statistical outliers identified in the viability checks are concentrated at this upper end of the distribution.

Mid-ranking countries span a wide range of income levels and geographies. Poland (rank 28, $1.04 billion), Argentina (rank 32, $677 million), and Australia (rank 70, $300 million) sit alongside sub-Saharan African nations such as Kenya (rank 27, $1.06 billion) and Tanzania (rank 29, $937 million). A notable anomaly is the placement of Singapore at rank 76 ($273 million), ranking higher than Belgium (rank 78, $269 million) and Greece (rank 81, $226 million), countries with substantially larger land areas and populations. At the lower end, small island states and low-population territories cluster near the bottom, with Iceland (rank 176, $3.9 million) and St. Vincent and the Grenadines (rank 177, $3.4 million) just above Tonga (rank 178, $1.6 million).

This metric has several important limitations. Because damages are calculated as foregone labor income, countries with lower average wages will record lower absolute damage values even if pollution exposure per capita is high. This means the ranking conflates pollution burden with economic development level. Absolute totals also disadvantage large countries regardless of pollution efficiency. Indoor PM2.5 from solid-fuel cooking is included, but the quality and granularity of household energy data varies across countries. The source note indicates estimates of health impacts draw from the Global Burden framework, and coverage or methodology differences across countries may introduce inconsistencies. Territories such as Puerto Rico (rank 135) and Guam (rank 162) appear alongside sovereign states, which may affect comparability.

Methodology

Data source: World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code NY.ADJ.DPEM.CD, data year 2021. The metric is defined as follows: particulate emissions damage is the damage due to exposure of a country's population to ambient concentrations of particulates measuring less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5), ambient ozone pollution, and indoor concentrations of PM2.5 in households cooking with solid fuels. Damages are calculated as foregone labor income due to premature death. The ranking covers 178 countries, meeting the minimum coverage threshold of 80. Of these, 164 out of 178 countries (92.1%) have data from the 2021 reference year, and 176 out of 178 (98.9%) have data from within the last seven years. All datapoints (100%) are classified as official quality, exceeding the 70% threshold. The data contains 20 extreme outliers as identified by a 3-sigma test. Average year-over-year change is 7.4%, well within the 50% volatility threshold. Values range from $1,556,880 to $83,796,153,616, a spread of over 5.3 million percent. Units are absolute current US dollars; higher values indicate greater total damage and rank higher in this index.

Sources

• World Bank