Impact of Electrification on Children's Nutritional Status in Rural Bangladesh
Impact of Electrification on Children's Nutritional Status in Rural Bangladesh
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DOI：
10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.07.016
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发表时间：
2018-02-01
影响因子：
6.9
通讯作者：
Xu, Sijia
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fujii, Tomoki;Shonchoy, Abu S.;Xu, Sijia
获得电力有可能通过各种途径改善儿童的营养状况，例如增加财富，通过改变时间使用减少生育率，通过电视等技术传播信息，以及改善保健服务。然而，电气化和儿童的营养状况之间的关系很少在文献中探讨。我们试图填补这一空白，提供微观计量经济学证据，从农村孟加拉国，在电气化的快速扩张和显着改善儿童的营养状况，在过去的二十年中观察。我们发现，获得电力对五岁以下儿童的营养状况产生了积极影响，根据2000年至2014年五轮孟加拉国人口与健康调查的身高年龄Z分数（HAZ）测量，约为0.1-0.2分。我们的研究结果似乎还表明，电力质量可能会影响这种积极影响的大小。虽然我们对因果路径的分析受到数据可用性的限制，但它表明电气化的积极影响部分来自财富的增加。在某些年份，积极影响也可归因于生育率下降和通过电视观看信息。相反，我们发现几乎没有证据表明这种影响是由于当地卫生设施的改善。我们的研究结果强调了从广泛的角度评估农村电气化等基础设施项目的重要性，因为它们的影响可能远远超出典型的成本效益分析中考虑的经济效益。这反过来可能会鼓励政府更多地投资于基本的基础设施，而孟加拉国和南亚其他地区和撒哈拉以南非洲的许多国家仍然严重缺乏基础设施。(C)2017爱思唯尔有限公司版权所有
Access to electricity has the potential to improve the nutritional status of children by a variety of pathways such as increased wealth, reduced fertility through the change in time use, spread of information through technology such as TV, and improved health care services. Yet, the relationship between electrification and children's nutritional status is rarely explored in the literature. We attempt to fill this lacuna by offering microeconometric evidence from rural Bangladesh, where a rapid expansion of electrification and significant improvement in children's nutritional status were observed in the past two decades. We find that access to electricity has a positive impact on the nutritional status of children under five as measured by height-for-age Z-score (HAZ) by around 0.1-0.2 points using five rounds of Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey from 2000 to 2014. Our results also appear to indicate that the quality of electricity may influence the size of this positive impact. While our analysis of causal pathways is limited by the data availability, it suggests that the positive impact of electrification partially comes from increased wealth. For some years, the positive impact can also be attributed to reduced fertility and information exposure through TV viewing. On the contrary, we find little evidence that the impact is attributable to the improvement of local health facilities. Our findings underscore the importance of evaluating infrastructure programs such as rural electrification from a broad perspective as their impacts may go well beyond the economic benefits considered in a typical cost-benefit analysis. This in turn may encourage governments to invest more in basic infrastructure, which is still severely lacking in Bangladesh and many other countries in the rest of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.