Rural access to electricity and welfare outcomes in Rwanda: Addressing issues of transitional heterogeneities and between and within gender disparities

Abstract

The literature on the impact of electricity access are generally inconclusive. Potential causes include geographical differences, limited external validity (due to the focus on small-scale projects) and self-selection bias (due to not accounting for observed and unobserved heterogeneities) of some studies. Moreover, a large part of the literature on energy-gender nexus addresses between-gender instead of within-gender disparity, which is considered relevant because socio-economic characteristics do differ within a particular gender group. We address some of these concerns in the literature, using the endogenous switching regression (as identifying strategy) and the Rwanda national fifth Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey data of 2016/2017 to examine electricity adoption decision and impact of electrification on welfare outcomes in rural Rwanda. We find that having access to electricity impacts positively on equivalised consumption and labour force participation by 3.097 percent and 22 more days, respectively. We find significant positive transitional heterogeneity effects, suggesting that unobserved factors do inflate the estimated impacts. Further, the result reveals significant male – female gap (both in terms of vertical and horizontal changes) in the impact of electrification on labour force participation and equivalised consumption expenditure. We discuss the policy implications.