Does Special Education in Elementary and Middle School Mitigate the Effects of Early Childhood Lead Exposure?

Heather Klemick, Ron Shadbegian, Dennis Guignet, Linda T. Bui and Anh Hoang

No 388973, National Center for Environmental Economics-NCEE Working Papers from United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Abstract: We examine the relationship between childhood lead exposure and special education using data on over 800,000 North Carolina 3rd-8th grade students. We use matching and panel data techniques to estimate the effect of lead exposure on the probability of having a learning disability that qualified students for special education and to estimate the effect of special education on lead-exposed students’ academic performance. We find that higher lead exposure significantly increased participation in special education, and special education significantly increased lead-exposed students’ test scores. These results indicate that special education can help mitigate academic deficits for lead-exposed students with learning disabilities.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Health Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/388973/files/2025-04.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:nceewp:388973

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.388973

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in National Center for Environmental Economics-NCEE Working Papers from United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().