Electricity Outages and Health Outcomes of Children: Empirical Evidence from Transition Economy

Yermone Sargsyan

No 2021/32, Working Papers IES from Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies

Abstract: The electricity prices in developing countries are relatively low to recover its costs of generation and provision. This results in under-investment in infrastructure, which usually leads to frequent outages or rolling blackouts by the electricity suppliers. Outages may have an adverse impact on the household's welfare including the health of household members. Using household-level panel data "Life in Kyrgyzstan" (LIK), and a coarsened exact matching (cem) procedure this paper investigates whether there is a relationship between outages and the health of children. Specifically, I study the differences in the anthropometric outcomes of children aged 5 and below (given by the z-scores) living in households that experience frequent outages and those which do not. I find that the children living in the households with frequent outages have z-scores of height-for-age that are -0.334 units lower, and z-scores of weight-for-age that are -0.157 units lower than compared to the children living in the observationally identical households but without frequent outages.

Keywords: electricity outages; child health; height-forage; weight-for-age; developing countries; transition economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I14 J13 P36 Q41 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2021-10, Revised 2021-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-ene and nep-tra
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp2021_32

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