Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/197101 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Citation: 
[Journal:] Economies [ISSN:] 2227-7099 [Volume:] 6 [Issue:] 3 [Publisher:] MDPI [Place:] Basel [Year:] 2018 [Pages:] 1-13
Publisher: 
MDPI, Basel
Abstract: 
We believe the massive rural electrification, which began in 1992, played a significant role in the varying fertility rates across rural Ghana. Rural households with electricity, tend to have fewer children ever born to a woman than households without electricity. Using control function regressions, we identify the contribution of electrification to the rural-rural variation in fertility by exploiting the exogenous variations in the access rate to electricity at the district-level. Our results indicate that electrification contributes to a fall in fertility among rural women by between one and three children. These results are qualitatively similar to results from our two-stage least squares estimations and counterfactual analysis. Although our results may not reflect what happens in other countries, they suggest that electrification reduces fertility and should be considered when examining the costs and benefits of rural electrification programs in developing countries.
Subjects: 
rural electronification
fertility
control function
JEL: 
J11
J13
R23
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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