Tropentag, September 16 - 18, 2026, Göttingen "Towards multi-functional agro-ecosystems promoting climate-resilient futures"

Crop-residue burning and women's anemia outcomes: Evidence from agricultural smoke exposure in northern India

¹University of Göttingen, RTG 2654 Sustainable Food Systems, Germany
²University of Göttingen, Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), Germany

Abstract

Post-monsoon crop-residue burning is a primary driver of seasonal particulate pollution across the Indo-Gangetic Plain in India, yet its causal health consequences for rural women remain poorly documented. While existing literature links ambient PM2.5 to anemia and respiratory outcomes, causal evidence from rural settings and agricultural pollution sources is scarce. This study examines whether wind-transported agricultural smoke worsens hemoglobin status and increases anemia risk among rural women, using individual health data from the Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) combined with satellite-derived fire activity, wind fields, and gridded pollution data.

The estimation sample comprises 47,783 women interviewed during the October–December burning season across eight Indo-Gangetic Plain states and 68 districts. Identification exploits plausibly exogenous day-to-day variation in wind direction and speed to construct wind-weighted smoke exposure indices over 60-day and 90-day trailing windows. Models include district and interview year-month fixed effects, absorbing confounding seasonal and geographic variation alongside controls for weather and household characteristics. PM2.5 is examined as a mechanism check rather than the primary estimand, since agricultural smoke carries a complex pollutant mixture and instrumenting for PM2.5 alone would require an exclusion restriction that is difficult to defend in this setting.

In the main 90-day reduced-form specification, a one-standard-deviation increase in wind-weighted smoke exposure reduces altitude-adjusted hemoglobin by 0.028 g/dL (p < 0.001) and raises anemia probability by 0.72 percentage points (p < 0.001). The smoke index strongly predicts ambient PM2.5 concentrations over the same window, supporting a pollution-transport pathway. Results are robust to alternative window lengths, exposure radii of 75, 100, and 150 kilometres, functional form, and a range of placebo and falsification tests including future-exposure placebos, randomisation-based falsification, and predetermined covariate balance checks.

These findings provide causally identified evidence that crop-residue burning imposes measurable health costs on rural women across the Indo-Gangetic Plain, with direct implications for agricultural residue management, environmental regulation, and rural public health policy across India.

Keywords: Agricultural smoke, anemia, causal identification, crop-residue burning, hemoglobin, India, Indo-Gangetic Plain, pm².5, rural women, wind-weighted exposure

Contact Address: Bukola Da-Silva, University of Göttingen, RTG 2654 Sustainable Food Systems, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 12, 37073 Göttingen, Germany, e-mail: bukola.da-silvauni-goettingen.de