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IZA Discussion Paper No. 18977
September 2026
When the Fields Burn: The Hidden Costs of Agricultural Fires on Children's Education

Agricultural residue burning releases pollutants that prevailing winds carry across administrative boundaries. We study the effects of fire-driven pollution on the cognitive development and educational trajectories of around 700,000 children aged 5--16 in Pakistan, combining satellite-derived burned area data, wind direction, and nationally representative learning assessments. Our treatment measure captures fires within 15 kilometers of a child's district that burn upwind; comparable downwind fires, which reflect the same agricultural activity but carry smoke away from the child, serve as a placebo. A one standard deviation increase in upwind fire exposure reduces test scores in mathematics, reading, and English by roughly 0.02 standard deviations; downwind fires have no effect. Impacts are concentrated in the school term, with no effect from summer-holiday fires. Boys and girls suffer similar cognitive losses, but over time older girls face higher dropout, consistent with lower perceived returns to female education in a patrilocal society, and child labor rises. The results survive extensive robustness checks. Agricultural burning is thus a constraint on human capital development, not only a public health issue.

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Mark Fallak
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+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer-ext@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
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Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

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