How Toxic Waste Affects Children’s Education

Just how bad is it to live near a toxic waste site? In addition to affecting physical health, it can also hamper children’s cognitive and behavioral development, according to research. Indeed, in the United States it might even help explain a portion of the test-score gap between white and African American students.

The US government established the Superfund program in 1980 to clean up designated polluted, hazardous sites. Some 11 million Americans, including up to 4 million children, still live within 1 mile of a Superfund site, according to official estimates. On top of any other impact, living near a site exacts a significant educational cost, say Northwestern University’s Claudia Persico and David Figlio and the University of Florida’s Jeffrey Roth.

Using birth records in Florida from 1994 to 2002, the researchers studied families in which at least one older child was conceived and born while his or her parents lived within 2 miles of a Superfund site, as well as families whose children were conceived and born after sites were cleaned. The researchers looked at school records, examining test scores, behavioral incidents, and the likelihood of a child repeating a grade.

Siblings conceived before Superfund site cleanups were 7 percentage points more likely to repeat a school year by the fifth grade than their younger counterparts conceived postcleanup. This represents a 40 percent increase in the likelihood that a child will repeat a grade, compared to the average for children born in the same neighborhoods after they had been cleaned.

Children conceived before cleanups were also 7 percent more likely than their siblings to have a behavioral problem in school, many of which were severe enough to result in suspensions.

On standardized tests, the exposed sibling’s score was 0.06 of a standard deviation lower, even though older siblings generally score better than younger siblings on standardized tests. For comparison’s sake, minorities generally score lower on standardized tests, and the black-white test-score gap is half a standard deviation. The difference between siblings pre- and post-Superfund cleanup represents between one-fifth of the test-score gap within 1 mile of a Superfund site and one-tenth of that gap within 2 miles.

“If we’re wondering what one of the sources of these test-score gaps might be, this could be part of the answer, since black and low-income women are more likely to live near Superfund sites,” Persico says.

Within 1 mile of a Superfund site, children conceived before cleanup were 10 percentage points more likely to be diagnosed with a cognitive disability than their younger siblings.

The significant educational costs associated with living near high levels of pollution indicate there are calculable benefits to cleaning up such sites. The authors estimate cleaning up Superfund sites would pay for itself in 38 years, based solely on reduced costs of special education for local children.