Poisoning the mind: Arsenic contamination of drinking water wells and children's educational achievement in rural Bangladesh

Bangladesh has experienced the largest mass poisoning of a population in history owing to contamination of groundwater with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. Prolonged drinking of such water risks development of diseases and therefore has implications for children's cognitive and psychological development. This study examines the effect of arsenic contamination of tubewells, the primary source of drinking water at home, on the learning outcome of school-going children in rural Bangladesh using recent nationally representative data on secondary school children. We unambiguously find a negative and statistically significant correlation between mathematics scores and arsenic-contaminated drinking tubewells at home, net of the child's socio-economic status, parental background and school specific unobserved correlates of learning. Similar correlations are found for an alternative measure of student achievement and subjective well-being (i.e. self-reported measure of life satisfaction), of the student. We conclude by discussing the policy implication of our findings in the context of the current debate over the adverse effect of arsenic poisoning on children.

► For a large sample of secondary school children in Bangladesh, we find a negative and statistically significant correlation between mathematics scores and arsenic-contaminated drinking water wells at home.
► This finding is robust to extensive controls for the child's socio-economic status, and classroom specific correlates of learning.
► The estimated effects range from −0.08 to −0.17 standard deviations for the primary-standard mathematics test scores while for secondary-standard mathematics, they range between −0.05 and −0.07 standard deviations.
► The negative effect is absent for religious school children suggesting that the potential effect of arsenic contamination could operate through social channels.