Affiliation:
1. School of Entrepreneurship, Rishihood University, Sonipat
2. University of Delhi, New Delhi
Abstract
Quality issues in water such as presence of high levels of arsenic, nitrates, iron, salinity and fluoride has been witnessed in various parts in India. Presence of fluoride at alarming levels has led to severe threat to human survival. Prolong consumption of contaminated water with an unsafe fluoride level can lead to many diseases. Therefore, using the exogenous variation in fluoride across districts, we try to assess the impact of fluoride contaminated water on health outcomes particularly for children; dental and skeletal diseases. Usingnationally representative dataset for India, greater exposure to fluoride contamination is associated with adverse health outcomes amongst school going children. Our findings suggest that an additional increase in fluoride contamination leads to higher risk of dental (odds ratio-1.196) and skeletal diseases (odds ratio-1.206). Moreover, the intensity and incidence of such diseases (dental-1.398 and skeletal diseases-1.494) has increased drastically over time. Our estimates are also robust to district and time fixed effects. Our findings also suggestchildren who belong to the age group of 7-14 years of age experience such adverse health outcomes relatively more than those who belongs to 0-6 years of age, owing to visibility of fluoride related symptoms at later stages in life. Uniformity of our results holds even after using an alternative measure of estimation, Propensity Score Matching.