Pollution imposes significant costs on the global economy, amounting to about $4.86 Trillion every year.
| Datapoint | Source | Value | Type | Year | | Global Welfare Loss | The Lancet | $4.6 trillion | Study | 2017 | | Global Welfare Loss | The World Bank | $5.11 trillion | Study | 2016 |
The Lancet commision on pollution and health estimates that pollution was responsible for 16% of all deaths worldwide in 2015. Their survey, released in October 2017, further shows:
- Pollution-related diseases cause productivity losses that reduce GDP in low to middle-income countries by up to 2% per year.
- Pollution-related disease also results in health-care costs that are responsible for 1.7% of annual health spending in high-income countries and up to 7% of health spending in middle-income countries that are heavily polluted and rapidly developing.
- Welfare losses due to pollution are estimated to amount to US$4.6 trillion per year: 6.2% of global economic output.
The World Bank published a study in September 2016 suggesting that premature deaths due to air pollution in 2013 cost the global economy about $225 billion in lost labor income, or about $5.11 trillion in welfare losses worldwide.
- North American welfare losses cost 2.8% of GDP.
- Globally from 1990 to 2013, welfare losses nearly doubled and labor income losses increased by 40 percent, despite countries having made great gains in economic development and health outcomes.
- By 2013 about 87 percent of the world’s population was living in areas that exceeded the Air Quality guideline of the World Health Organization: an annual average of 10 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3).