Something in the Water: Contaminated Drinking Water and Infant Health

Currie, Janet Joshua Graff Zivin, Katherine Meckel, Matthew Neidell and Wolfram Schlenker, “Something in the Water: Contaminated Drinking Water and Infant Health,” Canadian Journal of Economics, 46(2013): 791-810.

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This paper provides estimates of the effects of in utero exposure to contaminated drinking water on fetal health. To do this, we examine the universe of birth records and drinking water testing results for the state of New Jersey from 1997 to 2007. Our data enable us to compare outcomes across siblings who were potentially exposed to differing levels of harmful contaminants from drinking water while in utero. We find small effects of drinking water contamination on all children, but large and statistically significant effect son birth weight and gestation of infants born to less educated mothers. We also show that those mothers who were most affected by contamination were the least likely to move between births in response to contamination.