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Powering education

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  • Hassan, Fadi
  • Lucchino, Paolo

Abstract

More than 1.3 billion people worldwide have no access to electricity and this has first-order effects on several development dimensions. In this paper we focus on the link between access to light and education. We randomly distribute solar lamps to 7th grade pupils in rural Kenya and monitor their educational outcomes throughout the year at quarterly frequency. We find that access to lights through solar lamps is a relevant and effective input to education. Our identification strategy accounts for spillovers by exploiting the variation in treatment at the pupil level and in treatment intensity across classes. We find a positive and significant intention-to-treat effect as well as a positive and significant spillover effect on control students. In a class with the average treatment intensity of our sample (43%), treated students experience an increase in math grades of 0.88 standard deviations. Moreover, we find a positive marginal effect of treatment intensity on control students: raising the share of treated students in a class by 10% increases grades of control students by 0.22 standard deviations. We exploit household geolocation to disentangle within-class and geographical spillovers. We show that geographical spillovers do not have a significant impact and within-school interaction is the main source of spillovers. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that the mechanism through which lamps affect students is by increasing co-studying at school especially after sunset.

Suggested Citation

  • Hassan, Fadi & Lucchino, Paolo, 2016. "Powering education," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67673, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:67673
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/67673/
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Kudo, Yuya & Shonchoy, Abu S. & Takahashi, Kazushi, 2015. "Impacts of solar lanterns in geographically challenged locations : experimental evidence from Bangladesh," IDE Discussion Papers 502, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    2. Derksen, Laura & Leclerc, Catherine Michaud & Souza, Pedro CL, 2019. "Searching for Answers: The Impact of Student Access to Wikipedia," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 450, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    3. Derksen, Laura & Leclerc, Catherine Michaud & Souza, Pedro CL, 2019. "Searching for Answers : The Impact of Student Access to Wikipedia," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1236, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    4. Aidan Coville & Victor Orozco & Arndt Reichert, 2019. "Paying Attention to Technology Innovations," World Bank Publications - Reports 34339, The World Bank Group.
    5. Ognen Stojanovski & Mark Thurber & George Muwowo & Frank A. Wolak & Kat Harrison, 2019. "Assessing Opportunities for Solar Lanterns to Improve Educational Outcomes in Rural Off-Grid Regions: Challenges and Lessons from a Randomized Controlled Trial," Working Papers id:12961, eSocialSciences.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Randomised controlled trial; solar lamps; education; energy access; spillover effects; randomised saturation design;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

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