Saving lives with cooking gas? Unintended effects of targeted LPG subsidies in Peru

Gas stoves are promoted as clean cooking technologies in developing countries despite the fact that they emit pollutants which are hazardous, in particular for children. I evaluate the effect of the conversion of households from wood-fuel cooking to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cooking on infant mortality using data from sixteen waves of Peru’s continuous Demographic and Health Survey. I exploit the sequential introduction of LPG subsidies targeting low-income households and compare early-treated districts to later or never treated districts using a staggered difference-in-difference estimation strategy. I find that infant mortality increased by 15% as a result of the massive fuel switch induced by the intervention, which corresponds to approximately 6,000 additional infant deaths between 2010 and 2020. Subsidizing LPG also caused a higher incidence of symptoms of acute respiratory infections in children under five and of moderate or severe anemia among adult women, two conditions which are known to be induced by air pollution from cooking fuels. I provide suggestive evidence that these negative health impacts are due to an increase in total exposure to air pollutants. These findings suggest that the promotion of gas stoves can lead to unwanted health outcomes in some contexts and should be undertaken with caution.