Title
Poor air at school and educational inequalities by family SES (with Risto Conte)

Summary
In this paper we study the social stratification in the impact of poor air quality at school on test score in math and language among 8th graders in Italy. We address two questions that refer to differences in exposure and heterogeneity in the effect by family SES: are low SES students more likely to attend schools in neighbourhood with poorer air quality? And, second, are high SES students more sheltered from the adverse effect of exposure to poor air quality at school? We use an uniquely created data-set with test scores in math and reading for all Italian students in a nationally administrated test in 2019 and with an identifier for each school and its postal address. We have 456,508 students and 6,882 schools. We geocode school locations based on their addresses and link the level of air pollution of the area around the school, using fine grained (1 km) ACAG data. To deal with possible confounders we use municipality fixed effects and control for an indicator of the quality of the school neighbourhood, using administrative fiscal data of the real estate values of the area around the school. We have three main findings. First, there is no SES gradient in the exposure to poor air at school. Second, we find a small but robust negative effect of PM2.5 on test score in math but not on reading. Third and in line with the prediction of the compensatory advantage model, this effect is mostly concentrated among low SES students. Conversely high SES students are largely unaffected by exposure to poor air quality at school.

Tema: COLLOQUIUM Fabrizio Bernardi
Hora: 6 oct 2022 12:00 Madrid

Unirse a la reunión Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85120667736

Código de acceso: 225074