Impact of access to electricity on the well-being of rural households in Senegal

Kadoukpè Gildas Magbondé, Djiby Thiam and Natascha Wagner

Journal of Development Effectiveness, 2025, vol. 17, issue 3, 318-341

Abstract: This study examines the welfare impacts of rural electrification using a panel dataset from 1,115 rural households in Senegal, observed in 2016 and 2020. Combining the quasi-experimental methods of propensity score matching (PSM) and difference-in-differences (DiD), we show that electrified households increased their non-food expenditure and non-agricultural employment by 39.5% and 39.2%, respectively, compared to their counterfactual. Children in electrified households are 45.3% more likely to be enrolled in school, 44.7% more likely to attend school, and study 63.3% more, with the increase in school attendance being more pronounced for girls compared to boys. Furthermore, poor households and those that have access to a marketplace drew the most substantial benefits from access to electricity. In sum, the findings show that access to electricity increases household well-being and thus encourage the speeding-up of universal access to electricity in rural areas both with on-grid and off-grid technologies.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2025.2499432

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