Temperature, Test Scores, and Human Capital Production

How does temperature affect the human capital production process? Evidence from 4.5 million New York City high school exit exams indicates that heat exposure may affect educational performance in both the short and long run. Taking an exam on a 90◦F day relative to a 72◦F day results in a reduction in exam performance that is equivalent to a quarter of the Black-White achievement gap, and meaningfully affects longer-run educational outcomes as well, leading to a 12.3% higher likelihood of failing a subject exam and a 2.5% lower likelihood of on-time high school graduation. Furthermore, cumulative heat exposure over the course of the preceding school year may reduce the rate of learning as seen in exit exam scores, controlling for the short-run effect of exam day temperature. Teachers try to offset some of the impacts of exam day heat stress by selectively boosting grades for students who experience particularly hot exam sittings, perhaps in response to low levels of classroom air conditioning. ∗The author would like to thank Larry Katz, Andrei Shleifer, Robert Stavins, Geoffrey Heal, Raj Chetty, Joe Aldy, Claudia Goldin, Edward Glaeser, Jim Stock, Sendhil Mullainathan, Melissa Dell, Michael Kremer, Josh Goodman, Jonah Rockoff, Jeff Miron, Peter Huybers, Daniel Schrag, Max Auffhammer, Sol Hsiang, Olivier Deschenes and numerous seminar participants at Harvard, Columbia, UC Berkeley, Oxford, IZA, Seoul National, the NYC Department of Health, the NBER Summer Institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for valuable comments and feedback. Thanks also to the NYC Department of Education for data access, and to Nicolas Cerkez, Rodrigo Leal, Kevin Eskici, and William Xiao for excellent research assistance. All remaining errors are my own. Funding from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, the National Science Foundation, and the Harvard Climate Change Solutions Fund is gratefully acknowledged.