Forest Cover and Dengue in Costa Rica: Panel Data Analysis of the Effects of Forest Cover Change on Hospital Admissions and Outbreaks
In this study, we estimate the marginal effects of increasing forest cover on dengue prevalence in Costa Rica using econometric models to relate hospital admission records to forest cover maps from 2001 and 2011. We find that increasing the percentage of forest cover significantly decreases both the number of hospital admissions for dengue and the probability of an outbreak.