Effects of rural electrification on household welfare: a meta-regression analysis

There is almost a consensus that electrification improves household well-being. However, review of existing literature reveals mixed and inconclusive results. Thus, this study is conducted to objectively summarize the effect-size estimates from primary studies, to identify the degree of publication bias and underlying genuine effects using meta-regression-analysis. We also examined the sources of heterogeneity in effect-size estimates from primary studies. We synthesized effect size estimates from those studies focusing on the effects of rural electrification on income, education, employment, time use and women empowerment using meta-regression approach. Indeed, our finding indicates that rural electrification improves rural household welfare. The result shows that there is genuine effect of rural electrification on household welfare indicators after publication bias is filtered out. Specifically, our finding shows that rural electrification has a statistically significant positive genuine effect on household education, employment, income, time uses and women empowerment. However, the study did not find strong evidence for the presence of publication selection for the included welfare outcomes, except for educational outcome. Therefore, collaborative interventions by national governments, international development assistance programs and donor agencies can play a crucial role in the provision of electricity to the poor households in least developed countries (LDCs) to change their life.