Air pollution and academic performance: Evidence from India

Health and well-being during childhood are vital for shaping human capital accumulation. In India, exposure to pollution is increasingly one of the greatest public health challenges facing the country. In this context, we examine the impact of short-run exposure to air pollution on children's academic performance. Using a large-scale dataset from 2008 to 2014, we causally estimate the impacts of contemporaneous air pollution on reading and math outcomes for children aged 5-16 years in rural India. To overcome endogeneity concerns, we use thermal inversions as an instrument for air pollution. We show that high levels of contemporaneous air pollution significantly reduce varying levels of reading outcomes by 1.11-2.39 percentage points and math outcomes by 0.53-1.90 percentage points, with girls and older children witnessing a larger decline. We find that school attendance is the main mechanism explaining these impacts. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.