Abstract
This paper studies the impact of gas flaring on respiratory health of children in the Niger delta. Gas flaring is the practice of burning large quantities of natural gas that are produced during the extraction of crude oil. The study finds that an additional gas flare within 7.5km increases the probability that a child suffers from coughing at any time over a two weeks period by 6.3 percentage points. The estimate is highly robust and several placebo tests suggest a causal interpretation. However, when using wind direction to obtain exogenous variation in air quality due to gase flaring, no significant effects are found.