Working Paper: NBER ID: w22955
Authors: Marcos A. Rangel; Tom Vogl
Abstract: Fire has long served as a tool in agriculture, but this practice's human capital consequences have proved difficult to study. Drawing on data from satellites, air monitors, and vital records, we study how smoke from sugarcane harvest fires affects infant health in the Brazilian state that produces one-fifth of the world's sugarcane. Because fires track economic activity, we exploit wind for identification, finding that late-pregnancy exposure to upwind fires decreases birth weight, gestational length, and in utero survival, but not early neonatal survival. Other fires positively predict health, highlighting the importance of disentangling pollution from economic activities that drive it.
Keywords: Agricultural Fires; Infant Health; Pollution; Sugarcane Harvest
JEL Codes: H23; I15; O13; Q53
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| upwind fires (Q54) | birth weight (J13) |
| upwind fires (Q54) | gestational length (C41) |
| upwind fires (Q54) | very preterm births (J13) |
| upwind fires (Q54) | low birth weight (J13) |
| upwind fires (Q54) | fetal death and stillbirths (J13) |
| upwind fires (Q54) | early neonatal mortality (J13) |
| upwind fires (Q54) | infant health outcomes (I14) |