Akpandjar, George
[Verfasser:in]
;
Quartey, Peter
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft];
Puozaa, Conrad
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft]
Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments April 30, 2014 erstellt
Beschreibung:
Ghana experienced a sharp fall in fertility of rural women after the year 1993. We believe the massive rural electrification in 1992 plays a major role in the falling fertility rates. To ascertain the role electrification plays in this fertility transition, we obtain data from the Ghana Living Standard Survey for our analysis. Using control function regressions, we identify the contribution of electrification to falling fertility by exploiting the exogenous variations in the rate of access to electricity in various districts. Our results indicate that electrification contributes to the fall in fertility of rural women between 1 and 3 children. We next compared these results to two stage least square estimations which give qualitatively similar results, indicating our results are robust. We recommend that the rural electrification project should be expanded as this will not only reduce fertility, but also increase the income of rural women through the development of small-scale industries