Air Pollution and Student Performance in the U.S. / Michael Gilraine, Angela Zheng.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gilraine, Michael.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Zheng, Angela.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w30061.

NBER working paper series no. w30061

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2022.

Summary:

We combine satellite-based pollution data and test scores from over 10,000 U.S. school districts to estimate the relationship between air pollution and test scores. To deal with potential endogeneity we instrument for air quality using (i) year-to-year coal production variation and (ii) a shift-share instrument that interacts fuel shares used for nearby power production with national growth rates. We find that each one-unit increase in particulate pollution reduces test scores by 0.02 standard deviations. Our findings indicate that declines in particulate pollution exposure raised test scores and reduced the black-white test score gap by 0.06 and 0.01 standard deviations, respectively.

Notes:

Print version record

May 2022.