Adding fuel to human capital: Exploring the educational effects of cooking fuel choice from rural IndiaCitation formats

TY - JOUR

T1 - Adding fuel to human capital: Exploring the educational effects of cooking fuel choice from rural India

AU - Biswas, Shreya

AU - Das, Upasak

N1 - Funding Information: The authors thank the handling editor and two referees for their valuable and constructive comments on the earlier version of the paper. The authors also thank Udayan Rathore for his assistance with the data. We are grateful to the ASER Centre and the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) program for sharing the data with us. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

PY - 2022/1/1

Y1 - 2022/1/1

N2 - The study examines the effect of household cooking fuel choice on educational outcomes of adolescent children in rural India. Using multiple large-scale nationally representative datasets, we observe household solid fuel usage to adversely impact school attendance, years of schooling and age-appropriate grade progression among children. This inference is robust to alternative ways of measuring educational outcomes, application of other datasets, specifications and estimation techniques. Importantly, the effect is found to be more pronounced for females in comparison to the males highlighting the gendered nature of the impact. On exploring possible pathways, we find that the direct time substitution on account of solid fuel collection and preparation can explain the detrimental educational outcomes that include learning outcomes as well, even though we are unable to reject the health channel. In the light of the micro and macro level vulnerabilities posed by the COVID-19 outbreak, the paper recommends interventions that have the potential to fasten the household energy transition towards clean fuel in the post-COVID world.

AB - The study examines the effect of household cooking fuel choice on educational outcomes of adolescent children in rural India. Using multiple large-scale nationally representative datasets, we observe household solid fuel usage to adversely impact school attendance, years of schooling and age-appropriate grade progression among children. This inference is robust to alternative ways of measuring educational outcomes, application of other datasets, specifications and estimation techniques. Importantly, the effect is found to be more pronounced for females in comparison to the males highlighting the gendered nature of the impact. On exploring possible pathways, we find that the direct time substitution on account of solid fuel collection and preparation can explain the detrimental educational outcomes that include learning outcomes as well, even though we are unable to reject the health channel. In the light of the micro and macro level vulnerabilities posed by the COVID-19 outbreak, the paper recommends interventions that have the potential to fasten the household energy transition towards clean fuel in the post-COVID world.

KW - Education

KW - Gender

KW - Rural India

KW - Solid fuel

KW - Time use

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85121216806&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105744

DO - 10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105744

M3 - Article

VL - 105

JO - Energy Economics

JF - Energy Economics

SN - 0140-9883

M1 - 105744

ER -