TY  - JOUR
AU  - Currie,Janet
AU  - Hanushek,Eric
AU  - Kahn,E. Megan
AU  - Neidell,Matthew
AU  - Rivkin,Steven
TI  - Does Pollution Increase School Absences?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13252
PY  - 2007
Y2  - July 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13252
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13252.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Janet Currie
Princeton University
316 Wallace Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609-258-7393
Fax: 609-258-5974
E-Mail: jcurrie@princeton.edu

Eric A. Hanushek
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305-6010
Tel: 650/736-0942
Fax: 650/723-1687
E-Mail: hanushek@stanford.edu

E. Megan. Kahn
Dept. of Economics
Amherst, MA 01002-5000
E-Mail: emkahn@amherst.edu

Matthew J. Neidell
Department of Health Policy and Management
Columbia University
600 W 168th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10032
Tel: 212/342-4522
Fax: 212/305-3405
E-Mail: mn2191@columbia.edu

Steven G. Rivkin
Department of Economics
University of Illinois at Chicago
601 South Morgan UH725 M/C144
Chicago, IL 60607
Tel: 312.413.2368
E-Mail: sgrivkin@uic.edu
AB  - We examine the effect of air pollution on school absences using unique administrative data for elementary and middle school children in the 39 largest school districts in Texas.  These data are merged with information from monitors maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency.  To control for potentially confounding factors, we adopt a difference-in-difference-in differences strategy, and control for persistent characteristics of schools, years, and attendance periods in order to focus on variations in pollution within school-year-attendance period cells.  We find that high levels of carbon monoxide (CO) significantly increase absences, even when they are below federal air quality standards.
ER  -