The Psychosocial Effects of the Flint Water Crisis on School-Age Children

Abstract

Lead poisoning has well-known impacts for the developing brain of young children, with a large literature documenting the negative effects of elevated blood lead levels on academic and behavioral outcomes. In April of 2014, the municipal water source in Flint, Michigan was changed, causing lead from aging pipes to leach into the city’s drinking water. In this study, we use Michigan’s universe of longitudinal, student-level education records, combined with home water service line inspection data containing the location of lead pipes, to empirically examine the effect of the Flint Water Crisis on educational outcomes of Flint public school children. We leverage parallel causal identification strategies, a between-district synthetic control analysis and a within-Flint difference-in-differences analysis, to separate out the direct health effects of lead exposure from the broad effects of living in a community experiencing a crisis. Our results highlight a less well-appreciated consequence of the Flint Water Crisis – namely, the psychosocial effects of the crisis on the educational outcomes of school-age children. These findings suggest that cost estimates which rely only on the negative impact of direct lead exposure substantially underestimate the overall societal cost of the crisis.