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Abstract There are sizeable energy access deficits in the developing world. Leveraging panel data from the experimental impact evaluations of three unconditional cash transfer programs in Malawi and Zambia, we investigate how ultra‐poor households in rural areas adapt their energy portfolios when experiencing exogenous increases in income. Households make several changes to the primary fuel sources that they use on a regular basis after receiving 3 to 4 years of transfers—moving from fires to torches for lighting purposes and reducing collected firewood use for cooking purposes. In general, households are more likely to make income‐induced adjustments to lighting fuels than to cooking fuels. While facilitating some movement away from firewood (arguably the most inferior energy source), the unconditional cash transfers rarely enable households to completely abandon this fuel. This is understandable given the range of pressing needs facing the beneficiary households—such as food security, the enhancement of which is the primary purpose of the transfer programs. Although recipient households are able to meet a greater share of their energy needs with relatively improved fuels (such as charcoal/coal in Zambia) and obtain assets for generating solar power, the observed impacts are unlikely to be large enough to lead to meaningful health impacts (such as lower respiratory disease via reductions in indoor air pollution). However, the cash transfers appear to enhance well‐being in other ways through the energy use channel—for example, by reducing the time households spend foraging for fuel resources.
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Migration and fuel use in rural Zambia
Abstract What is the effect of migration on fuel use in rural Zambia? Opportunities to increase income can be scarce in this setting; in response, households may pursue a migration strategy to increase resources as well as to mitigate risk. Migrant remittances may make it possible for households to shift from primary reliance on firewood to charcoal, and the loss of productive labor through migration may reinforce this shift. This paper uses four waves of panel data collected as part of the Child Grant Programme in rural Zambia to examine the connection between migration and the choice of firewood or charcoal as cooking fuel and finds evidence for both mechanisms. Importantly, this paper considers migration as a process, including out as well as return migration, embedding it in the context of household dynamics generally. Empirical results suggest that while out-migration helps move households away from firewood as a fuel source, return migration moves them back, but because the former is more common, the overall effect of migration is to shift households away from primary reliance on firewood.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1743741
- PAR ID:
- 10318107
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Population and Environment
- Volume:
- 43
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0199-0039
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-021-00385-7
