Electrification and Children’s Education: A Cross-Country Analysis

Abstract: Access to electricity is undoubtedly an essential part of economic and social development in the developing world. For children, electrification can improve education as it enables studies after nightfall and it can help alleviate the burden of household chores. This study adds to the existing literature by using a cross-country approach as well as including test scores to examine the relationship between electrification and educational outcomes, in order to help clarify whether the results found in previous studies are local phenomenon or if they hold at a larger scale. Using OLS fixed-effects regressions based on panel data from the Young Lives survey between 2002 and 2013, focusing on Ethiopia and Peru, we find positive relationships between access to electricity and test scores, school enrollment and time spent in school, while we could not find any statistically significant differences between girls’ and boys’ outcomes. However, our results suggest that mere access to electricity is not enough to raise children’s educational attainment, but that electrification must be combined with other efforts that aim to increase the quality of the education the children receive in school.