7 March 2019: Talk on 'The Nitrogen Legacy: Long-Term Effects of Water Pollution on Human Capital'

Esha Zaveri
World Bank, Washington DC

Organised by
Centre for Policy Research and Central Water Commission (CWC)

Abstract:
The five-fold rise in the use of nitrogenous fertilizers since the mid-1960s resulted in profound changes to the nitrogen cycle and exacted a toll on India’s waters— runoff of excess nitrogen from fields increased concentrations of nitrate and nitrite in the rivers to harmful levels. Despite ecological evidence of too much nitrogen on the environment, much less is known about its toll on humans. In this paper, we provide new evidence of the legacy effects of nitrogen pollution and contribute to a growing literature on the persistent effects of early-life exposure on later life health outcomes. We compile a rich dataset of water quality along 145 rivers between the years 1970-2016 and exploit the direction of river flow and the upstream-downstream geographic relationship, coupled with cohort variation in exposure to estimate a pollution-health dose-response function. Preliminary findings show that women exposed to nitrate-nitrite pollution in their earliest years of life are shorter on average and more likely to experience a stillbirth in adulthood than women of similar circumstances who were not exposed to such pollution. Early-life exposure to nitrate-nitrite pollution also lowers later-life labor productivity and depresses adult wages decreasing overall welfare.

Date: March 7, 2019
Time: 03:00 P.M.

Venue:
Conference Hall, First Floor,
Central Board for Irrigation and Power (CBIP),
Malcha Marg, Chanakyapuri,
New Delhi-110021 (India)

Note:
Please RSVP at treads@cprindia.org.

Location: