Bureaucrat incentives reduce crop burning and child mortality in South Asia

Air pollution, a global health emergency, claims over 7 million lives annually, with South Asia experiencing some of the highest levels. Crop residue burning, though illegal, accounts for a substantial portion (40-60%) of peak winter pollution in the region. Despite the scale of the problem and the government's crucial role in environmental management, research on how bureaucratic actions impact crop burning remains limited. Previous studies have focused less on the conditions for successful environmental policy implementation and the capacity of bureaucrats to adapt to challenges like environmental degradation. The prevailing assumption is that overloaded bureaucrats lack sufficient incentives to address the diffuse problem of thousands of farmers engaging in crop burning, rendering the issue seemingly intractable. This research directly addresses this gap by examining whether and how bureaucratic incentives influence efforts to reduce crop burning in India and Pakistan, impacting the air quality of a significant portion of the global population.

Existing literature highlights the substantial health and economic burdens of air pollution in South Asia, particularly the contribution of agricultural emissions, especially crop residue burning, to PM2.5 levels. Studies underscore the illegal nature of this practice and its persistence despite legal prohibitions. However, research on the role of governmental institutions and bureaucratic actions in controlling crop burning is underdeveloped. Existing literature demonstrates limited understanding of successful environmental policy implementation at the governmental level. While there is emerging work on bureaucracy and development, the study of bureaucrats' adaptability and innovation to address challenges such as environmental degradation is still in its early stages. A common belief is that the problem is intractable due to the dispersed nature of the polluters (farmers) and limited bureaucratic impact, thus necessitating a fresh perspective on potential avenues for control.

This study employs a comprehensive, large-scale analysis of the political economy factors influencing crop burning across India and Pakistan. The researchers use a decade (2012-2022) of high-resolution satellite data on fires and wind patterns, combined with administrative data at the micro-level (5 km² grid cells), resulting in approximately 18 million observations. The analysis leverages the spatial and temporal variation in wind direction to assess bureaucratic incentives. The key treatment variable focuses on the shift in a grid cell's pollution exposure: from primarily impacting neighboring jurisdictions (control) to mainly affecting the bureaucrat's own district (treatment). A difference-in-differences model estimates the effect of this shift on the number of fires. The analysis further investigates the relationship between bureaucratic incentives (distance to district borders) and crop burning patterns, examining how these incentives intensify with proximity to borders, especially international ones. Additionally, the study analyzes the impact of bureaucratic punishment on farmer deterrence, using district-month level data on penalties for violating air pollution regulations. Finally, the researchers link bureaucratic behavior to infant and child mortality using Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data, remote-sensed air quality data (CAMS), and data on fires. They employ a two-pronged approach to estimate the impact of crop burning on mortality: a reduced-form analysis and an instrumental variables (IV) approach, instrumenting PM2.5 concentration with pollution particles from upwind fires. The HYSPLIT model is used to calculate pollution dispersion paths from fires.

The study's core findings demonstrate a strong link between bureaucratic incentives and crop burning patterns. When wind direction changes, resulting in pollution impacting the bureaucrats' own districts, crop burning decreases by 10-13%, reaching up to 22.24% reduction two months after the wind shift. This reduction is more significant during the harvest months and in rice-producing areas. The analysis reveals that bureaucratic incentives to curb burning are stronger in areas closer to district borders. Fires decrease by 14.47% in areas closer to the upwind border and increase by 15.11% in areas closer to the downwind border. These effects are even more pronounced at international borders (India-Pakistan). Further, the study confirms that bureaucratic actions against crop burning create a deterrent effect, leading to a 9-13% additional decrease in fires after a farmer is punished. Crucially, the analysis links crop burning to infant and child mortality. A 1-log increase in in utero exposure to PM2.5 from crop burning is estimated to cause 24-26 additional infant and 30-36 additional child mortalities per 1,000 births. This instrumental variables approach controls for confounders and reduces measurement error, offering robust causal estimates. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that 1.8-2.7 deaths per 1,000 could be prevented if all areas were managed as effectively as those that directly impacted the bureaucrats’ jurisdictions.

The findings challenge the assumption that controlling crop burning is intractable. The study demonstrates that existing bureaucratic structures can effectively reduce crop burning when properly incentivized. The significant impact of bureaucratic action on farmer deterrence suggests that comprehensive efforts to punish all farmers are not necessary. The strong correlation between in utero exposure to PM2.5 and child mortality underlines the profound public health implications of crop burning and the importance of effective intervention. This research provides concrete evidence on the critical role of institutional design and bureaucratic incentives in environmental management and public health outcomes. The high-frequency calibration of bureaucratic actions based on changing incentives presents opportunities for future research on environmental management.

This study offers compelling evidence that bureaucratic incentives significantly affect crop burning patterns and consequently, child mortality in South Asia. The findings highlight the potential for leveraging existing bureaucratic structures to improve environmental management and public health. Future research should investigate interactions within the district bureaucracy, the trade-offs involved in focusing on crop burning versus other tasks, and optimal strategies for incentivizing farmers to adopt alternative methods of crop residue management.

While the study uses a robust methodology, the analysis relies on observational data, limiting the ability to establish definitive causality. Future experimental studies could strengthen the causal inferences. The study focuses primarily on bureaucratic incentives and may not fully capture the influence of other factors, such as farmer behavior and local socio-economic conditions. The model's reliance on satellite data for fire detection may underestimate the total extent of crop burning, potentially affecting the estimates of pollution and mortality impacts.