 Lack of access to clean fuel and piped water and children’s educational outcomes in rural IndiaPallavi Choudhuri and Sonalde Desai () World Development, 2021, vol. 145, issue C Abstract: Investments in clean fuel and piped water are often recommended in developing countries on health grounds. This paper examines an alternative channel, the relationship between piped water and access to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and children’s educational outcomes. Results based on the second round of the India Human Development Survey (2011–12) for rural India show that children aged 6–14 years, living in households that rely on free collection of water and cooking fuel, have lower mathematics scores and benefit from lower educational expenditures than children living in households that do not collect water and fuel. Moreover, gender inequality in this unpaid work burden also matters. In households where the burden of collection is disproportionately borne by women, child outcomes are significantly lower, particularly for boys. The endogeneity of choice to collect or purchase water and cooking fuel are modeled via Heckman selection and the entropy balancing method. Keywords: Clean fuel; Piped water; Maternal time-investment; Unpaid work; Children’s educational outcomes; Rural India (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:145:y:2021:i:c:s0305750x21001479 DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105535 Access Statistics for this article World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes More articles in World Development from Elsevier |
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