One third of all women experience violence within their lifetime, most frequently perpetrated by their intimate partner (IPV). It impacts women’s sexual, reproductive, and mental health, and increases the risk of chronic disease. Ways to reduce IPV are less obvious, though. Especially in rural...

Electrification is frequently said to foster women's development and contribute to a modernization of gender roles. Using Demographic and Health Survey data from rural areas in 22 Sub-Saharan countries collected between 1999 and 2014, this paper examines the role of electricity access in...

The use of kerosene for lighting, cooking, and heating in developing countries is often considered a major health threat as it can cause accidents like thermal injuries, poisonings, fires or explosions. A number of hospital surveys emphasize this threat but evidence from household data is...

Providing electricity to the unconnected 1.1 billion people in developing countries is one of the top political priorities of the international community, yet the costs of reaching this objective are very high. The present paper examines whether the objective and the associated costs are...

The United Nations’ objective to provide electricity to the 1.3 billion people without access in developing countries comes at high costs. Little evidence exists on socioeconomic impacts of electrification. This paper rigorously investigates effects of a large grid extension program in Rwanda...

More than 1.3 billion people in developing countries are lacking access to electricity. Based on the assumption that electricity is a prerequisite for human development, the United Nations initiative Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) has proclaimed the goal of providing modern energy to all by...

More than 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity. The UN have proclaimed the goal of providing electricity to all by 2030. In recent years, Pico-Photovoltaic kits have become a lower cost alternative to investment intensive grid electrification. Using a randomized controlled trial we...

Non-electrified people in Africa, still more than 500 million today, have been using kerosene and candles for their lighting purposes for decades. The lighting quality of these sources is low and in particular kerosene usage is associated with harmful soot emissions. Alleviating this grievance...

The cost of providing electricity to the unconnected 1.1 billion people in developing countries is significant. High hopes are pinned on market-based dissemination of offgrid technologies to complement the expensive extension of public grid infrastructure. In this paper, we elicit the revealed...

Recent debates on how to provide electricity to the roughly one billion still unconnected people in developing countries have identified mini-grids as a promising way forward. High upfront costs of transmission lines are avoided, and unlike home-scale solar, mini-grids can provide sufficient...