Tap Water Access in Early Childhood and Long-Term Educational Performance

Abstract

We study the effect of access to tap water in early childhood on children’s university admission using data from Taiwan in the years 1978–80. Because access to tap water is managed by a water operation station in a household’s county, our identification strategy relies on two geographic attributes: (i) our instrumental variable is the distance from the house to the nearest water operation station, and (ii) our sample is of children born to families that live on the border of a county. We find that access to tap water in early childhood significantly increases the probability of university admission.