IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp13133.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Spillover Effects of Pollution: How Exposure to Lead Affects Everyone in the Classroom

Author

Listed:
  • Gazze, Ludovica

    (University of Warwick)

  • Persico, Claudia L.

    (American University)

  • Spirovska, Sandra

    (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Abstract

Evidence shows that lead-exposed children are more disruptive and have lower achievement. However, we know less about how lead-exposed children affect the learning environment of their classroom peers. We estimate these spillover effects using new data on children's blood lead levels (BLLs) matched to all education data in North Carolina. We compare siblings who attend the same school, but whose school-grade cohorts differ in the proportion of children with elevated BLLs. We find that having more lead-exposed peers is associated with lower test scores and graduation rates, increased suspensions and dropping out of school, and a decrease in college intentions.

Suggested Citation

  • Gazze, Ludovica & Persico, Claudia L. & Spirovska, Sandra, 2020. "The Spillover Effects of Pollution: How Exposure to Lead Affects Everyone in the Classroom," IZA Discussion Papers 13133, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13133
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp13133.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2013. "Under Pressure? The Effect of Peers on Outcomes of Young Adults," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 119-153.
    2. Bryan S. Graham, 2018. "Identifying and Estimating Neighborhood Effects," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(2), pages 450-500, June.
    3. Stephen B. Billings & Kevin T. Schnepel, 2018. "Life after Lead: Effects of Early Interventions for Children Exposed to Lead," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 315-344, July.
    4. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren, 2018. "The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility I: Childhood Exposure Effects," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(3), pages 1107-1162.
    5. Feigenbaum, James J. & Muller, Christopher, 2016. "Lead exposure and violent crime in the early twentieth century," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 51-86.
    6. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Jonah E. Rockoff, 2014. "Measuring the Impacts of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2633-2679, September.
    7. Scott E. Carrell & Mark L. Hoekstra, 2010. "Externalities in the Classroom: How Children Exposed to Domestic Violence Affect Everyone's Kids," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 211-228, January.
    8. Alexander, Diane & Currie, Janet, 2017. "Is it who you are or where you live? Residential segregation and racial gaps in childhood asthma," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 186-200.
    9. Gustavo J. Bobonis & Frederico Finan, 2009. "Neighborhood Peer Effects in Secondary School Enrollment Decisions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(4), pages 695-716, November.
    10. Robert Bifulco & Jason M. Fletcher & Stephen L. Ross, 2011. "The Effect of Classmate Characteristics on Post-secondary Outcomes: Evidence from the Add Health," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 25-53, February.
    11. Ferrie, Joseph P. & Rolf, Karen & Troesken, Werner, 2012. "Cognitive disparities, lead plumbing, and water chemistry: Prior exposure to water-borne lead and intelligence test scores among World War Two U.S. Army enlistees," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 98-111.
    12. Anna Aizer & Janet Currie, 2019. "Lead and Juvenile Delinquency: New Evidence from Linked Birth, School, and Juvenile Detention Records," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(4), pages 575-587, October.
    13. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren & Lawrence F. Katz, 2016. "The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(4), pages 855-902, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alex Hollingsworth & Mike Huang & Ivan J. Rudik & Nicholas J. Sanders, 2020. "A Thousand Cuts: Cumulative Lead Exposure Reduces Academic Achievement," NBER Working Papers 28250, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Zhou, Weina & Wang, Shun, 2023. "Early childhood health shocks, classroom environment, and social-emotional outcomes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ludovica Gazze & Claudia Persico & Sandra Spirovska, 2024. "The Long-Run Spillover Effects of Pollution: How Exposure to Lead Affects Everyone in the Classroom," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 357-394.
    2. Chung, Bobby W., 2020. "Peers’ parents and educational attainment: The exposure effect," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    3. Jeffrey T. Denning & Richard Murphy & Felix Weinhardt, 2023. "Class Rank and Long-Run Outcomes," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1426-1441, November.
    4. Miren Lafourcade & Florian Mayneris, 2017. "En Finir avec les ghettos urbains ?," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-01884340, HAL.
    5. Bobby W. Chung & Jian Zou, 2023. "Understanding spillover of peer parental education: Randomization evidence and mechanisms," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(3), pages 496-522, July.
    6. Goulas, Sofoklis & Megalokonomou, Rigissa & Zhang, Yi, 2022. "Female Neighbors, Test Scores, and Careers," IZA Discussion Papers 15733, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Fletcher, Jason M. & Ross, Stephen L. & Zhang, Yuxiu, 2020. "The consequences of friendships: Evidence on the effect of social relationships in school on academic achievement," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    8. Liwen Chen & Bobby Chung & Guanghua Wang, 2021. "Exposure to Socially Influential Peer Parents: Evidence from Cadre Parents in China," Working Papers 2021-052, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    9. Stephen B. Billings & Mark Hoekstra, 2019. "Schools, Neighborhoods, and the Long-Run Effect of Crime-Prone Peers," NBER Working Papers 25730, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Sofoklis Goulas & Rigissa Megalokonomou & Yi Zhang, 2023. "Female Neighbors, Test Scores, and Careers," Monash Economics Working Papers 2023-06, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    11. Federico Curci & Federico Masera, 2018. "Flight from urban blight: lead poisoning, crime and suburbanization," Working Papers 2018/09, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    12. Michael Geruso & Timothy J. Layton & Jacob Wallace, 2023. "What Difference Does a Health Plan Make? Evidence from Random Plan Assignment in Medicaid," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 341-379, July.
    13. Alex Hollingsworth & Mike Huang & Ivan J. Rudik & Nicholas J. Sanders, 2020. "A Thousand Cuts: Cumulative Lead Exposure Reduces Academic Achievement," NBER Working Papers 28250, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Alex Hollingsworth & Ivan Rudik, 2021. "The Effect of Leaded Gasoline on Elderly Mortality: Evidence from Regulatory Exemptions," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 345-373, August.
    15. Claudia Olivetti & Eleonora Patacchini & Yves Zenou, 2020. "Mothers, Peers, and Gender-Role Identity," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 266-301.
    16. John A. List & Fatemeh Momeni & Yves Zenou, 2020. "The Social Side of Early Human Capital Formation: Using a Field Experiment to Estimate the Causal Impact of Neighborhoods," Working Papers 2020-187, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    17. Abramitzky, Ran & Lavy, Victor & Pérez, Santiago, 2021. "The long-term spillover effects of changes in the return to schooling," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    18. Abbasi, Ali & DiTraglia, Francis J. & Gazze, Ludovica & Pals, Bridget, 2023. "Hidden hazards and screening policy: Predicting undetected lead exposure in Illinois," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    19. Higney, Anthony & Hanley, Nick & Moro, Mirko, 2022. "The lead-crime hypothesis: A meta-analysis," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    20. Lukas Kiessling & Jonathan Norris, 2020. "The Long-Run Effects of Peers on Mental Health," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2020_12, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    health; education; pollution; peers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13133. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.