Lead exposure and academic achievement: evidence from childhood lead poisoning prevention efforts

Lucy C. Sorensen (), Ashley M. Fox (), Heyjie Jung () and Erika G. Martin ()
Additional contact information
Lucy C. Sorensen: University at Albany, State University of New York
Ashley M. Fox: University at Albany, State University of New York
Heyjie Jung: Arizona State University
Erika G. Martin: University at Albany, State University of New York

Journal of Population Economics, 2019, vol. 32, issue 1, No 6, 179-218

Abstract: Abstract Though the adverse consequences of lead exposure in children have been well known for over a century, the recent Flint water crisis has drawn renewed attention to the impacts of lead exposure on human health and development. This study considers connections to educational outcomes, asking whether population-level lead exposure in early childhood influences later academic achievement and racial achievement gaps. It assesses the effectiveness of recent local- and state-level lead hazard control programs in mitigating exposure and uses this source of exogenous variation in early childhood exposure across birth cohorts to draw inferences about the long-term effects of lead on mean student test scores. Our findings indicate that lead hazard control grants reduced lead poisoning incidents by over 70% of the baseline prevalence. And each one percentage point reduction in lead poisoning in early childhood translated to a growth of 0.04 standard deviations in student math test scores and 0.08 standard deviations in student reading scores. This same reduction in lead poisoning narrowed both the white-Hispanic math achievement gap and white-Hispanic reading achievement gap by 0.06 standard deviations, implying important downstream consequences for economic inequality.

Keywords: Lead exposure; Population intervention; Early childhood health; Economics of education; Achievement gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I24 J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00148-018-0707-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:jopoec:v:32:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s00148-018-0707-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-018-0707-y

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().