Fertility and Rural Electrification in Bangladesh

We use a panel dataset from Bangladesh to examine the relationship between fertility and the adoption of electricity with the latter instrumented by infrastructure development and the quality of service delivery. We find that the adoption of electricity reduces fertility, and this impact is more pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: FUJII, Tomoki, SHONCHOY, Abu S.
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/1762
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/2761/viewcontent/IDP000521_001.pdf
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Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:We use a panel dataset from Bangladesh to examine the relationship between fertility and the adoption of electricity with the latter instrumented by infrastructure development and the quality of service delivery. We find that the adoption of electricity reduces fertility, and this impact is more pronounced when the household already has two or more children. This observation can be explained by a simple household model of time use, in which adoption of electricity affects only the optimal number of children but not necessarily current fertility behavior if the optimal number has not yet been reached.