EARLY LIFE EXPOSURE TO CROP BURNING AND ITS IMPACT ON CHILD HEALTH OUTCOMES

Abstract

In-utero and early life shocks have lasting impacts on a plethora of outcomes such as health, human capital, cognition and education. In the recent past, seasonal crop burning after harvest has been causing severe degradation of air quality and has led to worsening of health in those areas. Motivated by these 2 strands of literature our research question is that does in-utero and postnatal exposure to air pollution impact health outcomes of children after birth? And do these impacts vary with gender of child and wealth of households? We test this using pooled cross-sectional data from Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) for the years 2011, 2014 and 2017 for Punjab. The primary health outcomes of interest are height for age, weight for age and incidence of cough and diarrhea. We find no significant impact of exposure to crop burning on child health outcomes for the aggregate sample. Better health infrastructure and higher proportion of wealthier population compensates for negative effects of exposure to crop burning in rice hubs. Further analysis reveals lowest wealth quintile households and female children to be most affected and vulnerable to exposure from these crop burning practices.