An interesting finding from Liu, Wang, Jin, and Lu (2025):
While the labor market impacts of industrial robots have been extensively studied, their broader health impacts, particularly on chronic diseases, remain unexplored. This study fills this gap by linking China’s national-industry robot adoption data to personal health records from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Employing a city-level Bartik-type instrumental variable strategy, our two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimation shows that the increase of one robot per thousand workers in a city reduces local The probability of individuals having chronic disease is 8.67%. The mechanisms driving these health benefits include better working conditions, improved physical and mental well-being, and healthy lifestyle choices. Cost-benefit analysis shows that these health benefits are substantial, far outweighing the acquisition costs of the robots. Our findings from China highlight an important, yet overlooked, positive externality of automation on public health in developing economies.
You can read the full paper here.
