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Energy poverty is a crucial issue faced by countries all around the world, as the largest developing country in the world, China is also experiencing energy poverty problems. In order to explore the health effect of energy poverty in China, this paper first uses the principal component analysis (PCA) to construct a comprehensive index to measure energy poverty, and then adopts the ordinary least square method (OLS), fixed effect model (FE), instrumental variable two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS) regression to study the impact of energy poverty on the physical and mental health of Chinese people based on China Family Panel Studies 2018 (CFPS 2018). The study discovers that energy poverty significantly hampers the mental and physical health of Chinese people, an increase in energy poverty might cause 28.74%、18.69% decrease in mental and physical health respectively. Moreover, this paper further explores the influencing paths of energy poverty by intermediary effect and regulatory effect. It is revealed that in addition to directly affecting physical and mental health, energy poverty also have a negative impact on physical and mental health by affecting the accessibility of a series of resources, such as water and food, reducing the opportunities for physical exercise and increasing medical expenses. However, the impact is restricted by age and family income. Finally, under the national strategy of China, this paper further discusses how to give consideration to the joint implementation of heath and emission reduction strategies, then gives specific policy suggestions based on the results.

The construction of China’s Free Trade Zone (FTZ) is an important strategy for China’s thorough deepening of opening up and achievement of long-term high-quality development. Based on the panel data of 283 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2008–2019, this paper adopts the methods of Spatial Differences-in-Differences (SDID), Spatial Differences-in-Differences-in-Differences (SDDD), and spatial intermediary effect test to empirically examine the impact and the spatial spillover of China’s free trade zone on the environmental pollution of the pilot areas and its influencing mechanism. According to the findings of the study, the establishment of pilot free trade zones may suppress urban PM2.5 emissions by around 2.9 percent, and FTZs can also greatly enhance the air quality of neighboring cities. Further examination of the influencing mechanism reveals that the establishment of a FTZ inhibits PM2.5 pollution and has a significant positive spillover on PM2.5 reduction in surrounding cities by the following means: attracting more foreign direct investment; improving the industrial structure through increasing the proportion of tertiary industry; prompting the local government to strengthen environmental regulation as part of the FTZ’s supporting policies; increasing the investment in science and technology innovation, developing scientific and technological level to achieve green production. The empirical results of this paper are still robust after a series of robustness tests when the explained variable is replaced by the traditional air pollution indicator industrial nitrogen oxide emissions, another sort of spatial matrix is introduced, the propensity score matching SDID (PSM-SDID) and placebo tests as well as winsorize method are carried out. Furthermore, the inhibitory effect of FTZs on air pollution is modified by changes in city size, geographic location and city type, according to heterogeneity analysis. Finally, this paper proposes feasible policy recommendations.