94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Environmental Health and Exposome
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1551413
This article is part of the Research Topic Environmental degradation, health, and socioeconomic impacts View all articles
The Role of Environmental Efficiency and Economic Development in Fertility: Implications for Public Health and Sustainability among OECD Nations
Provisionally accepted- 1 Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
- 2 Center for Product Innovation Management of Hubei Province, Wuhan, China
As global economies rapidly develop, the interplay between environmental efficiency, economic development, and public health outcomes has garnered significant attention. Air pollution and resourceintensive economic activities pose threats not only to environmental sustainability but also to various dimensions of human health, including reproductive health and overall well-being. This study focuses on the member countries of the OECD, using data from 1999 to 2021 and employing an undesirable outputs-oriented DEA approach to assess environmental efficiency across these countries. The baseline regression results indicate an inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental efficiency and fertility, where fertility declines initially with increasing environmental efficiency and then increases after reaching a certain threshold. Furthermore, the heterogeneity analysis reveals that industrial and energy consumption structures significantly influence the relationship between environmental efficiency and fertility across different regions. This study also explores the moderating effect of economic development levels, with findings showing that economic development acts as a reverse moderator in the relationship between environmental efficiency and fertility. Specifically, in countries with higher levels of economic development, the relationship between environmental efficiency and fertility follows a significant U-shaped curve. These findings highlight the necessity of integrating environmental policies with public health strategies, as improvements in environmental efficiency may reduce pollution-related health risks, indirectly supporting fertility recovery in advanced economies. By addressing the interaction between environmental efficiency, economic development, and fertility, this study provides evidencebased insights for designing policies that promote sustainable environmental health and equitable social 2 outcomes.
Keywords: fertility rate, Air Pollution, Environmental efficiency, Economic Development, sustainability, DEA
Received: 25 Dec 2024; Accepted: 06 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mu, He and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jingshu Zhang, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.