Toxic roads: Unearthing hazardous waste dumping

Illegal disposal of toxic waste has become an issue of concern in both developing and developed countries. Recycling hazardous waste entails very high costs, which might give strong incentives to dispose toxic material in an illegal way. This paper adopts an innovative strategy to identify where toxic waste might have been illicitly dumped. The strategy relies on a crucial premise: road constructions provide an ideal setting in which the burial of hazardous waste may take place. Guided by the medical literature, we investigate the health outcomes of individuals living along recently constructed roads in Ethiopia. We construct a unique dataset, which includes the extensive Demographic and Health Survey, together with georeferenced data on roads, villages and economic development, covering a 10-year period. We find that an additional road within a 5 kilometres radius is associated with an increase in infant mortality by 3 percentage points. Moreover, we provide evidence that young children living near a recently built road show a lower level of haemoglobin and are more likely to suffer from severe anaemia. A series of robustness checks confirms the above findings and excludes other potential confounding factors.