Coal Use and Student Performance

Valentina Duque and Michael Gilraine

No 2020-07, Working Papers from University of Sydney, School of Economics

Abstract: This paper examines the effect of air pollution from power production on students’ cognitive outcomes. To do so, we leverage variation in power production over time, wind patterns, and plant closures. We find that each one million megawatt hours of coal-fired power production decreases student performance in schools within ten kilometers by 0.02 SD and 0.01 SD in math and English, respectively. We find no such relationship for gas-fired plants. Extrapolating our results nationwide indicates that the decline in coal use in the United States from 2007 through 2018 increased student performance by 0.003 SD and reduced the black-white test score gap by 0.002 SD.

Keywords: Air Pollution; Coal Power; Education; Health. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-ure
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