Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Assessing The Health Effects Of Burn Ban Policy Implementation: Evidence From Texas Counties, Jatin Suri

CMC Senior Theses

I exploit county-level variation in burn ban policies to estimate the effect of burn bans on respiratory disease mortality rates in Texas counties from 2008 to 2020. Using a fixed effects regression model that controls for year and county fixed effects, as well as drought index, firefighting resources, and aging population, I find that burn bans decrease respiratory disease mortality rates by 7 people per 100,000 in the year when the policy is implemented and reduced mortality rates, due to burn ban implementation, persist over a 3-year period. This result is statistically significant (p-value <.05) and provides a novel contribution to an area largely overlooked in previous literature. While previous studies have mainly focused on the economic and environmental effects of burn bans, this research specifically investigates the health outcomes associated with county-level burn bans. Additionally, this study provides evidence of the persistence of the benefits of county-level burn bans over a 3-year period. This contribution to the literature sheds light on the sustained benefits of implementing and enforcing burn bans, which has not been previously explored in prior research.