High-Stakes Examinations and Educational Inequality : Evidence from Transitory Exposure to Air Pollution

Using unique data that track college students' performance over multiple high-stakes tests, we study the impact of transitory random disturbances to student cognitive performance and a minimum-passing-score policy on access to graduate education. Exploiting thermal inversions as an instrumental variable and individual fixed effects, we document significant adverse cognitive effects of transitory exposure to air pollution during the exam, which vary considerably by pollution level, exam section, student academic ability, and gender. We further show that the harmful cognitive effects permanently reduce students’ chances of getting into graduate school, especially for marginal students who scored just below the minimum passing score. Marginal students would be less affected by random disturbances and have more equal access to graduate education had such an exam policy not been adopted