Open Access Journal Article

Does Education Predict Women’s Use of Unsustainable Biomass Cooking Technologies? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

by Jean-Louis Bago a,* orcid  and  Marie Madeleine Ouoba b
a
Department of Economics, Government of Quebec, Canada
b
Virtual University of Burkina Faso, Department of education, Burkina Faso
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
ETE  2024 2(1):11; https://doi.org/10.58567/ete02010005
Received: 29 January 2024 / Accepted: 6 April 2024 / Published Online: 20 May 2024
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Abstract

In developing countries, the dependence on traditional biomass for domestic energy consumption is one of the major causes of deforestation and environmental poverty. This paper investigates the impact of women’s education on the probability of using Unsustainable Biomass Cooking Technologies (UBCT) as the household main fuel of cooking instead of clean energy. Combining data from four rounds of Nigeria DHS conducted between 2003 and 2018, we take advantage of a natural experiment, the implementation of Uni-versal Primary Education policies in 1970, to obtain an exogenous variation in women’s education levels. Using an instrumental variable approach to control for the endogeneity issues, we find that women with higher levels of education are less likely to use UBCT as their primary source of cooking. This result implies that environmental policies in developing countries should rely not only on income transfers policies as suggested in the literature but also on increasing women's human capital to reduce women’s dependence on unsustainable biomass cooking practices.

Keywords: Education; Women; Biomass; Cooking; Nigeria;
Copyright: © 2024 by Bago and Ouoba. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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ACS Style
Bago, J.; Ouoba, M. M. Does Education Predict Women’s Use of Unsustainable Biomass Cooking Technologies? Evidence from a Natural Experiment. Energy Technologies and Environment, 2024, 2, 11. https://doi.org/10.58567/ete02010005
AMA Style
Bago J, Ouoba M M. Does Education Predict Women’s Use of Unsustainable Biomass Cooking Technologies? Evidence from a Natural Experiment. Energy Technologies and Environment; 2024, 2(1):11. https://doi.org/10.58567/ete02010005
Chicago/Turabian Style
Bago, Jean-Louis; Ouoba, Marie M. 2024. "Does Education Predict Women’s Use of Unsustainable Biomass Cooking Technologies? Evidence from a Natural Experiment" Energy Technologies and Environment 2, no.1:11. https://doi.org/10.58567/ete02010005
APA style
Bago, J., & Ouoba, M. M. (2024). Does Education Predict Women’s Use of Unsustainable Biomass Cooking Technologies? Evidence from a Natural Experiment. Energy Technologies and Environment, 2(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.58567/ete02010005

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