How many years does dirty air cost?
The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) built its reputation on a single translation: turning particulate air pollution into years of life lost. Its flagship Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) converts fine-particulate exposure into its impact on life expectancy, using peer-reviewed causal studies of pollution and longevity. A Mandarin version of the index was launched in Beijing in 2019. For this site, EPIC is the institutional context behind AQLI — and the guardrail is that AQLI measures what its method measures, nothing more.
EPIC was established in June 2011 as a joint project of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, Department of Economics, and Harris School of Public Policy. Economist Michael Greenstone has directed it since July 2014. In early 2025 EPIC became one of three foundational pillars of the university’s new Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth, with Greenstone as founding faculty director.
EPIC-China
In 2019 EPIC launched EPIC-China, a program housed at the University of Chicago’s Center in Beijing, dedicated to frontier economics research with local partners on cost-effective air-pollution reduction and energy access. A five-year research collaboration with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences on energy and environmental issues was announced the same year. EPIC-China is a program of EPIC, not a separately chartered institution, and is covered in this single record. The current staffing and status of the Beijing program has not been independently confirmed in this pass — the launch facts are 2019; treat anything beyond them as unverified.
The Air Quality Life Index — what it measures and what it doesn’t
AQLI is a metric that converts particulate pollution into its impact on life expectancy, developed by Greenstone and colleagues from peer-reviewed causal studies of particulate pollution and longevity. It is open access at aqli.epic.uchicago.edu, and the full dataset record sits in the site’s Dataset Directory.
What it does not measure: AQLI is not a measure of overall environmental health, of energy access, or of pollutants other than particulates. It does not capture the full burden of air pollution — only the life-expectancy channel its method can causally identify. Do not cite it as a general environmental score, and do not let EPIC’s broader energy research be read as an endorsement of any particular pollution-reduction policy. The index is a measurement tool; the policy conclusions are the reader’s to draw.
Using EPIC in research
EPIC is the site’s anchor for China air-pollution policy and environmental-economics evidence: the AQLI dataset for quantitative framing, the EPIC China Report (open PDF, 2022 edition) for the institute’s own research program. Cite AQLI figures with the methodology caveat alongside the numbers — particulate-to-life-expectancy, causally identified, not a whole-environment measure. Michael Greenstone’s expert record is anchored here as EPIC director.