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Title: Effects of Early-Life Radiation Exposure on Human Capital and Outcomes

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2018

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Abstract: The first chapter studies the effect of prenatal radiation exposure on educational attainment and the live-birth sex ratio in the United States. I consider the aboveground nuclear tests in the 1960s as a natural experiment and find that an increase in radiation exposure in the second prenatal quarter, which covers the most radiosensitive gestational period, is associated with a significant decrease in years of education. A model is developed to address the measurement error in prenatal radiation due to misreported birth year in the data. It is shown that under reasonable assumptions, the estimated effect of prenatal radiation exposure on educational attainment is downward-biased. I also find that the live-birth ratio of males to females following a year with higher radiation exposure drops significantly, which supports the theory of gender-biased spontaneous abortion in response to radiation exposure. The instrumental variables (IV) model is widely used in estimating returns to education. A key, untestable, assumption for the validity of IV is the exclusion restriction. In Chapter 2, I revisit the common schooling instrument based on local college openings to evaluate its validity and estimate heterogeneity in treatment effects. To do this, I use infant radiation exposure in the US in the early 1960s a measurable shifter that affects the latent ability term, which is assumed to be independent of the IV. Under the IV assumptions, introducing a control function for latent ability should have no effect on the estimated return to schooling. I find that controlling for infant ii radiation exposure does not significantly alter the IV estimates. Second, the latent ability shifter can be used to identify heterogeneity in IV treatment effects. I show that the estimated IV treatment effect of schooling on wages decreases sharply with infancy radiation exposure. I estimate that students who experienced infant radiation exposure levels one standard deviation above the sample mean earned zero return to an additional year of schooling at the high school/college margin. Chapter 3 studies the effect of the Chernobyl accident on fetal survival and birth outcomes in the United States. The accident occurred on April 26th 1986, and had an instant impact on environmental radiation detected in the U.S. I combine the U.S. environmental radiation data, the fetal death data, and the birth certificate data, so to link the occurrence of fetal death and live birth to local history of radiation. I find that the probability of male fetal death hazard is significantly increased by radiation exposure in mid gestation, especially in the 5th-6th gestational month. I also find significant changes in various birth outcomes for babies who experienced high radiation exposure in both their early and late gestation. Radiation in early gestation increases birth weight and lowers congenital malformation rates. Radiation in late gestation lowers birth weight while increases the APGAR score. These findings suggest multi-dimensional effects of prenatal radiation exposure on newborn health traits.

Url: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=osu1531319599383312&disposition=inline

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Authors: Chang, Teng-Jen

Institution: The Ohio State University

Department: Economics

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Pages: 138

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Health

Countries: United States