Rural Electrification and Employment in Poor Countries: Evidence from Nicaragua

Louise Grogan

No 1303, Working Papers from University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance

Abstract: This paper shows that rural electrification is associated with big changes in the time use of men and women in Nicaragua, even in the absence of labor-saving appliances. Electricity is shown to increase the propensity of rural Nicaraguan women to work out- side the home by about 23%, but to have no impact on male employment. These findings suggest significant potential benefits to rural electrification that are not generally captured in cost–benefit analyses, such as greater women’s earnings and reduced deforestation.

Keywords: electric light; time use; employment; labor-saving technology; slope gradient; population density (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H4 I3 O1 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-dev and nep-ene
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (82)

Published in World Development, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.09.002

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.uoguelph.ca/economics/sites/uoguelph.ca.economics/files/2013-03.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.uoguelph.ca/economics/sites/uoguelph.ca.economics/files/2013-03.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.uoguelph.ca/economics/sites/uoguelph.ca.economics/files/2013-03.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Rural Electrification and Employment in Poor Countries: Evidence from Nicaragua (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gue:guelph:2013-03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stephen Kosempel ().