We demonstrate that heat inhibits learning and that school air conditioning may mitigate this effect. Student fixed effects models using students who retook the PSATs show that hotter school days in the years before the test was taken reduce scores, with extreme heat being particularly damaging. Weekend and summer temperatures have little impact, suggesting heat directly disrupts learning time. New nationwide, school-level measures of air conditioning penetration suggest patterns consistent with such infrastructure largely offsetting heat’s effects. Without air conditioning, a 1°F hotter school year reduces that year’s learning by 1 percent. Hot school days disproportionately impact minority students, accounting for roughly 5 percent of the racial achievement gap. (JEL I21, I24, J15, Q54)
Heat and Learning
J. Goodman,Michael Hurwitz,Jisung Park,Jonathan Smith
Published 2018 in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
ABSTRACT
PUBLICATION RECORD
- Publication year
2018
- Venue
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
- Publication date
2018-05-24
- Fields of study
Education, Environmental Science
- Identifiers
- External record
- Source metadata
Semantic Scholar
CITATION MAP
EXTRACTION MAP
CLAIMS
- No claims are published for this paper.
CONCEPTS
- No concepts are published for this paper.
REFERENCES
Showing 1-69 of 69 references · Page 1 of 1