The Human Capital Cost of Radiation: Long-Term Evidence form outside the Womb

We investigate the long-run impact of radiation on cognitive skills. We focus on Germany, which received a large amount of fallout after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, resulting in a permanent increase in radiation... [ view full abstract ]

We investigate the long-run impact of radiation on cognitive skills. We focus on Germany, which received a large amount of fallout after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, resulting in a permanent increase in radiation levels in the soil. To identify a causal effect, we exploit that the fallout depended on idiosyncratic rainfall within a 10-day window after the disaster. Using geo-coded survey data, we find that people who lived in a more contaminated area in 1986 perform significantly worse in standardized cognitive tests 25 years later. This effect is driven by older cohorts in our sample, while we find no effect for those first exposed during early childhood. These results suggest that radiation has negative effects even when people are first exposed during adulthood, and they point to significant external costs of nuclear power generation.