Research

Each year, outdoor air pollution claims three million lives worldwide. In Colombia, levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exceed the limits stipulated by WHO guidelines. This study is the first to measure environmental disparities by skin tone. Using satellite-based PM2.5 estimates and the Colombian longitudinal household survey, it reveals a transformation: While in 2010, individuals with darker skin tones experienced lower pollution levels, by 2016, they faced significantly worse air quality. Satellite geolocation of fires reveals a persistent link between skin tone and fire-related pollution exposure. Decomposition analysis reveals that two-thirds of the exposure gap is attributable to individual characteristics. One-third remains unexplained, underscoring the need to further investigate the potential role of racial discrimination.

The adverse effects of motherhood on market work are a persistent source of gender inequality. Using high-frequency data from Mexico, we unveil the dynamics of households' time budgets around childbirth. Mothers assume over nine additional hours of unpaid work per week relative to fathers—an increase that more than offsets their decline in paid employment. Consequently, a five-hour gender gap emerges in total productive time—the sum of paid and unpaid work—with mothers working longer overall than fathers. Other women in the household, including girls, adjust their time allocation to care for the newborn significantly more than male household members, perpetuating gender roles. Through the participation of female family members in childcare, family structure emerges as a relevant factor determining parental time allocation, disproportionately benefiting men. The potential cost of outsourcing the added time burden on mothers represents 24% of household income.

Many cities have adopted air quality alert systems to reduce the health risks from severe pollution episodes, pairing public messaging with temporary restrictions on vehicle and industrial activity. Despite their widespread implementation, evidence on their effectiveness remains mixed, in part because of data limitations and a focus on traffic-only or voluntary measures. This paper evaluates Mexico City’s air quality alert program using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design that exploits a preset ozone threshold for policy activation. I find that alerts lead to significant improvements in ozone and sulfur dioxide concentrations and sizable reductions in emergency department visits for respiratory (56\% decrease) and cardiovascular conditions (50\% decrease). The effects on transport-related pollutants are smaller and time-dependent, consistent with the alerts mitigating vehicle emissions more slowly. To assess mechanisms, I analyze information-seeking behavior, mobility data, and emissions inventories. The alerts increase online searches about air quality and the policy itself, but not about protective behaviors. Traffic volume falls and congestion improves, though public transit usage does not increase. Finally, I show that the pollution reductions are largest near restricted industrial facilities, which suggests that industrial curbs play a central role in policy effectiveness. These results can support the design of short-term environmental response policies in cities facing both mobile and stationary sources of pollution.

Environmental degradation is a major public policy challenge, with the Global South being particularly vulnerable to its effects. In developing countries, women and girls often bear a greater burden of climate change and air pollution than men and boys do. The international literature suggests that compared to men, women are more concerned about environmental degradation and adopt more sustainable practices in their daily lives, but research on this matter in Global South countries is scarce. This study aims to explore the gender differences in environmental knowledge, attitudes, and practices (E-KAP) among secondary school-aged children in Colombia. In Latin America, no research has yet examined the underlying mechanisms driving these differences. We confirm that compared to boys, girls are significantly more concerned about the environment and feel more responsible for climate change (8–10 p.p.). We also provide new insights into girls’ greater awareness and familiarity with indoor air pollution (IAP) (8.5–9 p.p.) and expand on previous research that focused on exposure rather than on perception. Our findings can help in designing and developing inclusive education policies for climate adaptation and mitigation, particularly in Global South countries, and they have the potential to empower students in the face of climate change.

The frequency and intensity of extreme temperature events are likely to increase with climate change. Using a detailed dataset containing information on the universe of loans extended by commercial banks to private firms in Mexico, we examine the relationship between extreme temperatures and credit performance. We find that unusually hot days increase delinquency rates, primarily affecting the agricultural sector, but also non-agricultural industries that rely heavily on local demand. Our results are consistent with general equilibrium effects originated in agriculture that expand to other sectors in agricultural regions. Additionally, following a temperature shock, affected firms face increased challenges in accessing credit, pay higher interest rates, and provide more collateral, indicating a tightening of credit during financial distress.

Industrial development has ramifications for women’s participation in labor markets and society, in the short and long run. We explore the Gold Rush that took place in the Western United States in the second half of the 19th century. The Gold Rush led to high male-skewed inward migration and created gender-specific job market opportunities, with men entering mining employment and women entering the service sector. In gold mining counties, both men and women worked less in farming. After revealing the baseline patterns, we disentangle the direct effect of gold mining from the mediating effect of the skewed sex ratio, using formal mediation analysis. The skewed sex ratio is driving lower marriage rates for men, and higher female participation in the service sector. The results are consistent with surviving written accounts from the time, suggesting a high premium for traditionally female services. Using census data spanning almost a century, we show that these differences persisted long after the initial conditions of the Gold Rush had passed.

A robust body of evidence shows that air pollution exposure is detrimental to health outcomes, often measured as deaths and hospitalizations. This literature has focused less on subclinical channels that nonetheless impact behavior, performance, and skills. This article reviews the economic research investigating the causal effects of pollution on “non-health” endpoints, including labor productivity, cognitive performance, and multiple forms of decision making. Subclinical effects of pollution can be more challenging to observe than formal health care encounters but may be more pervasive if they affect otherwise healthy people. The wide variety of possible impacts of pollution should be informed by plausible mechanisms and require appropriate hypothesis testing to limit false discovery. Finally, any detected effects of pollution, both in the short and long run, may be dampened by costly efforts to avoid exposure ex-ante and remediate its impacts \textit{ex-post}; these costs must be considered for a full welfare analysis.

Menstrual hygiene management is an important determinant for girls’ educational outcomes. We develop a method of cross-sectional analysis that quantifies the relative importance of four distinct mechanisms: material, biological, social, and informational constraints and consider four main schooling outcomes: absenteeism, early departure, concentration, and participation. We use survey data from 524 female students enrolled in four co-educational secondary schools in Northern Tanzania. Information is the least binding constraint: 90-95\% of girls report they received information about menstruation and how to manage it. In contrast, biological constraints are hindering: (i) the distribution of menstrual cramps and pain is bifurcated: most girls report very light or extreme pain (rather than moderate) with considerable educational impacts for girls in the latter group, (ii) irregular cycles (62\%) and difficulty predicting the cycle (60\%) lead to stress and uncertainty. Socio-cultural constraints are binding as 84\% would feel shame if male peers knew their menstrual status, and 58\% fear being teased over periods. Material constraints include prohibitive costs: girls spend between 12-70\% of the daily national poverty line on pads during their period. However, we discern no statistically significant relationship between access to pads and absenteeism. In contrast, biological and socio-cultural constraints and lack of sanitary infrastructure significantly affect absenteeism. The results have several implications. First, sanitary pad interventions should consider participation and concentration as main outcomes, in addition to absenteeism. Second, biological (menstrual cramps and pain) and socio-cultural (fear, stigma) constraints are drivers of menstruation-related absenteeism and participation in the classroom and need to be evaluated in trials. We suggest exploring analgesic use, alternative pain-management techniques, menstrual cycle tracking technologies, and social programming in future trials.

Adolescent girls report stigma and teasing as worries surrounding menstruation. Menstrual hygiene interventions and research almost exclusively focus on girls and women, leading to a dearth of knowledge on male attitudes toward the topic. We surveyed adolescent boys in Tanzania on menstrual hygiene to explore determinants of boys' knowledge and teasing behavior. A sample of 432 boys and 524 girls were surveyed in four co-ed secondary schools in Western Tanzania about their menstrual health knowledge, attitudes, household stigma, and teasing behavior and experiences. 15\% of girls report having experienced period teasing, and 45\% fear being teased by male peers. Four out of five girls fear teasing related to insufficient menstrual hygiene management. Period related teasing and fears lead to lower school attendance and concentration and participation in the classroom. Boys report teasing female classmates because periods are embarrassing and if girls smell or have blood stains. Boys are well-informed about the basic biological facts of menstruation, scoring on average 60\% correct on a quiz, and they have received information from school curricula and health workers. Despite this, boys express that girls should hide periods and not discuss it with male peers, teachers or fathers. Period shaming and teasing is prevalent in secondary schools, despite access to accurate information. Lack of suitable menstrual hygiene practices causes social harm to girls through commonly practiced teasing. Including male students in menstrual health education is important to reduce acceptability of teasing behavior relating to menstruation.

While a large body of literature suggests that tobacco control legislation—including fiscal measures such as excise taxes—effectively reduces tobacco smoking, the long-run (10+ years) relationship between cigarettes excise taxes and life expectancy has not been directly evaluated. Here, we test the hypothesis that increases in state cigarette excise taxes are positively associated with long-run increases in population-level life expectancy. We studied age-standardised life expectancy among all US counties from 1996 to 2012 by sex, in relation to state cigarette excise tax rates by year, controlling for other demographic, socioeconomic and county-specific features. We used an error-correction model to assess the long-run relationship between taxes and life expectancy. We additionally examine whether the relationship between cigarette taxes and life expectancy was mediated by changes to county smoking prevalence and varied by the sex, income and rural/urban composition of a county. For every one-dollar increase in cigarette tax per pack (in 2016 dollars), county life expectancy increased by 1 year (95% CI 0.60 to 1.40 years) over the long run, with the first 6-month increase in life expectancy taking 10 years to materialise. The association was mediated by changes in smoking prevalence and the magnitude of the association steadily increased as county income decreased. Results suggest that increasing cigarette excise tax rates translates to consequential population-level improvements in life expectancy, with larger effects in low-income counties.