The Long-Term Effects of Unexpected Interruptions in Compulsory Schooling

This paper studies the long-run impacts of unexpected interruptions in regular schooling. Using storms as an exogenous shock, we examine how compulsory schooling disruptions affect educational attainments and the type of activity performed by indi- viduals in young adulthood. We construct a unique continuous measure of childhood exposure to storms that varies by birth-year cohort and district for young adults in rural and urban India. We find that storms have substantial disruptive impacts on education. In the districts exposed to the most powerful winds, the estimates imply that children are 9% more likely to accumulate an educational delay and 6.5% less likely to obtain higher levels of education (beyond secondary school). In the long run, these delays have an impact on the type of labor market activity that these individuals perform. Using childhood exposure to storms as an instrument, we find that a one-year educational delay leads to a 42.6% drop in the probability of accessing regular salaried jobs. We determine that the impact of storms on education works through a permanent negative income shock.