Bureaucrat incentives reduce crop burning and child mortality in South Asia

Air pollution in South Asia is a health emergency, responsible for 2 million deaths every year¹. Crop residue burning accounts for 40-60% of peak pollution during the winter harvest months^2,3. Despite being illegal, this practice remains widespread^4,5. Any solution to curb the problem necessitates government action at scale. Here we study whether leveraging the incentives of bureaucrats tasked with controlling burning can mitigate this phenomenon. Using a decade of wind, fire and health data from satellites and surveys from the Demographic and Health Surveys Program, we show that crop burning responds to bureaucrat incentives: fires increase by 15% when wind is most likely to direct pollution to neighbouring jurisdictions, and decrease by 14.5% when it pollutes their own. These effects intensify with stronger bureaucratic incentives and capacity. We also find that bureaucrat action against burning deters future polluters, further reducing fires by 13%. Finally, using an atmospheric model, we estimate that one log increase in in utero exposure to pollution from burning raises child mortality by 30-36 deaths per 1,000 births, underscoring the importance of bureaucrat action. Contrary to the growing beliefs that the problem of crop burning is intractable^6,7, these findings highlight specific ways in which existing bureaucrats, when properly incentivized, can improve environmental management and public health outcomes.