TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Silva, Lihini de
AU  - Mahmood, Rafat
AU  - Ponnusamy, Sundar
        TI  - When the Fields Burn: The Hidden Costs of Agricultural Fires on Children's Education
        PY  - 2026/Sep/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18977
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp18977
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - agricultural fires
KW  - air pollution
KW  - cognitive development
KW  - child labor
        ER  -