Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Fertility transition powered by women’s access to electricity and modern cooking fuels

Nature Sustainability volume 5, pages 245–253 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Access to electricity and modern cooking fuels, especially for women, leads to time savings in the home, improved health and better access to information. These factors increase women’s well-being and enhance their ability to make reproductive choices, which is empirically expressed by falling birth rates. This study provides an international analysis of the relationship between access to modern energy and fertility, based on panel data synthesized from 155 Demographic and Health Surveys over 26 years. Controlling for other determinants, we find that access to electricity and modern cooking fuels, along with education, negatively affects fertility. Energy and education effects are complementary and strongest in regions with initially high fertility rates. Expanded access to modern energy and education would accelerate the demographic transition. Therefore, the energy demand and carbon emissions needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of energy access while ensuring gender equality and climate action would be lower in the long term than currently assumed.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Links between modern energy and fertility.
Fig. 2: Trends in access to electricity, modern cooking fuels and fertility in 44 countries.
Fig. 3: Marginal effects of access to modern energy on fertility.
Fig. 4: Standardized coefficients of different factors on fertility in three models.
Fig. 5: Predicted fertility decline from 2015 to 2040 in 25 sub-Saharan African countries under three scenarios of access to electricity and female education.

Data availability

The DHS data used to produce the main panel data are publicly available and free of charge at https://dhsprogram.com/, but access to the data requires permission from the DHS Program. The country-level data were downloaded from the World Bank Open Data repository and are publicly available at https://data.worldbank.org/ and free of charge. The conflict data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program are publicly available at https://ucdp.uu.se/ and free of charge. The processed data are available on the git repository of this Article: https://gitlab.pik-potsdam.de/belmin/fertility-transition-powered-by-womens-access-to-electricity-and-modern-cooking-fuels/. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The preprocessing and the analysis were carried out in R and Rmarkdown and are fully reproducible. All the code is available on the git repository of this Article: https://gitlab.pik-potsdam.de/belmin/fertility-transition-powered-by-womens-access-to-electricity-and-modern-cooking-fuels/. The following R packages were central to the analysis: tidyverse63, plm64, knitr65, wbstats66, rdhs67 and DHS.rates68.

References

  1. Johansson, T. B., Patwardhan, A. P., Nakićenović, N. & Gomez-Echeverri, L. Global Energy Assessment: Toward a Sustainable Future (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012).

  2. McCollum, D. L. et al. Connecting the Sustainable Development Goals by their energy inter-linkages. Environ. Res. Lett. 13, 033006 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Steinberger, J. K. & Roberts, J. T. From constraint to sufficiency: the decoupling of energy and carbon from human needs, 1975–2005. Ecol. Econ. 70, 425–433 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Das, I. et al. A Virtuous Cycle? Reviewing the Evidence on Women’s Empowerment and Energy Access, Frameworks, Metrics and Methods (Duke University, 2020); https://energyaccess.duke.edu/publication/a-virtuous-cycle-reviewing-the-evidence-on-womens-empowerment-and-energy-access-frameworks-metrics-and-methods/

  5. Wickramasinghe, A. Energy access and transition to cleaner cooking fuels and technologies in Sri Lanka: issues and policy limitations. Energy Policy 39, 7567–7574 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Rewald, R. Energy and Women and Girls: Analyzing the Needs, Uses, and Impacts of Energy on Women and Girls in the Developing World (Oxfam, 2017).

  7. Adaji, E. E., Ekezie, W., Clifford, M. & Phalkey, R. Understanding the effect of indoor air pollution on pneumonia in children under 5 in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review of evidence. Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. 26, 3208–3225 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Ezzati, M. Indoor air pollution and health in developing countries. Lancet 366, 104–106 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Smith, K. R. Indoor air pollution in developing countries and acute lower respiratory infections in children. Thorax 55, 518–532 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Rehfuess, E. & WHO Fuel for Life: Household Energy and Health (WHO, 2006).

  11. Energy and Air Pollution: World Energy Outlook Special Report 2016 (OECD and IEA, 2016).

  12. WHO Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality: Household Fuel Combustion (WHO, 2014).

  13. Winther, T., Matinga, M. N., Ulsrud, K. & Standal, K. Women’s empowerment through electricity access: scoping study and proposal for a framework of analysis. J. Dev. Effect. 9, 389–417 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Dixon Mueller, R. Population Policy and Women’s Rights: Transforming Reproductive Choice (Praeger, 1993).

  15. The Power of Choice: Reproductive Rights and the Demographic Transition (UNFPA, 2018).

  16. Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report (2021) (IRENA, 2021); https://www.irena.org/publications/2021/Jun/Tracking-SDG-7-2021

  17. Sachs, J. et al. Sustainable Development Report 2020: The Sustainable Development Goals and COVID-19 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2020).

  18. Grimm, M., Sparrow, R. & Tasciotti, L. Does electrification spur the fertility transition? Evidence from Indonesia. Demography 52, 1773–1796 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Grogan, L. Household electrification, fertility, and employment: evidence from hydroelectric dam construction in Colombia. J. Hum. Cap. 10, 109–158 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Potter, J. E., Schmertmann, C. P. & Cavenaghi, S. M. Fertility and development: evidence from Brazil. Demography 39, 739–761 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Peters, J. & Vance, C. Rural electrification and fertility—evidence from Côte d’Ivoire. J. Dev. Stud. 47, 753–766 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Fujii, T. & Shonchoy, A. S. Fertility and rural electrification in Bangladesh. J. Dev. Econ. 143, 102430 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Harbison, S. F. & Robinson, W. C. Rural electrification and fertility change. Popul. Res. Policy Rev. 4, 149–171 (1985).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Energy Access Outlook (IEA, 2017).

  25. Ringhofer, L., Singh, S. J. & Fischer-Kowalski, M. in Ester Boserup’s Legacy on Sustainability: Orientations for Contemporary Research (eds Fischer-Kowalski, M. et al.) 117–138 (Springer, 2014).

  26. Dasgupta, P. in Handbook of Environmental and Resource Economics Vol. 1 (eds Mäler, K. & Vincent, J.) Ch. 5 (North Holland, 2003).

  27. Pachauri, S. & Rao, N. D. Gender impacts and determinants of energy poverty: are we asking the right questions? Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 5, 205–215 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Grogan, L. & Sadanand, A. Rural electrification and employment in poor countries: evidence from Nicaragua. World Dev. 43, 252–265 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Dinkelman, T. The effects of rural electrification on employment: new evidence from South Africa. Am. Econ. Rev. 101, 3078–3108 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Osili, U. O. & Long, B. T. Does female schooling reduce fertility? Evidence from Nigeria. J. Dev. Econ. 87, 57–75 (2008).

  31. Lutz, W. & KC, S. Global human capital: integrating education and population. Science 333, 587–592 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  32. Schultz, T. P. Human capital, family planning, and their effects on population growth. Am. Econ. Rev. 84, 255–260 (1994).

    Google Scholar 

  33. Rotondi, V., Kashyap, R., Pesando, L. M., Spinelli, S. & Billari, F. C. Leveraging mobile phones to attain sustainable development. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117, 13413–13420 (2020).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  34. La Ferrara, E., Chong, A. & Duryea, S. Soap operas and fertility: evidence from Brazil. Am. Econ. J. Appl. Econ. 4, 1–31 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Jensen, R. & Oster, E. The power of TV: cable television and women’s status in India. Q. J. Econ. 124, 1057–1094 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Mahat, I. Gender and rural energy technologies: empowerment perspective—a case study of Nepal. Rev. Can. Etudes Dev. 27, 531–550 (2006).

    Google Scholar 

  37. Lutz, W., Butz, W. P. & KC, S. (eds) World Population and Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford Univ. Press, 2014).

  38. Jejeebhoy, S. J. Women’s Education, Autonomy, and Reproductive Behaviour: Experience from Developing Countries (Oxford Univ. Press, 1995).

  39. Kravdal, O. Education and fertility in sub-Saharan Africa: individual and community effects. Demography 39, 233–250 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Gustafsson, S. Optimal age at motherhood. Theoretical and empirical considerations on postponement of maternity in Europe. J. Popul. Econ. 14, 225–247 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. World Bank Open Data (World Bank, 2020); https://data.worldbank.org/

  42. Hoffmann, R. & Lutz, S. U. The health knowledge mechanism: evidence on the link between education and health lifestyle in the Philippines. Eur. J. Health Econ. 20, 27–43 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. MacKinnon, D. P., Fairchild, A. J. & Fritz, M. S. Mediation analysis. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 58, 593–614 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2019).

  45. Bongaarts, J. & Casterline, J. Fertility transition: is sub-Saharan Africa different? Popul. Dev. Rev. 38, 153–168 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Kebede, E., Goujon, A. & Lutz, W. Stalls in Africa’s fertility decline partly result from disruptions in female education. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, 2891–2896 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  47. Africa Energy Outlook 2019 (IEA, 2019).

  48. Mason, K. O. Explaining fertility transitions. Demography 34, 443–454 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  49. Galor, O. & Weil, D. N. Population, technology, and growth: from Malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond. Am. Econ. Rev. 90, 806–828 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Standal, K. & Winther, T. Empowerment through energy? Impact of electricity on care work practices and gender relations. Forum Dev. Stud. 43, 27–45 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Rosenberg, M., Armanios, D. E., Aklin, M. & Jaramillo, P. Evidence of gender inequality in energy use from a mixed-methods study in India. Nat. Sustain. 3, 110–118 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Bazilian, M. et al. Energy access scenarios to 2030 for the power sector in sub-Saharan Africa. Util. Policy 20, 1–16 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Chakravarty, S. & Tavoni, M. Energy poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation: is there a trade off? Energy Econ. 40, S67–S73 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  54. Rao, N. D., Min, J. & Mastrucci, A. Energy requirements for decent living in India, Brazil and South Africa Nat. Energy 4, 1025–1032 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. KC, S. & Lutz, W. The human core of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways: population scenarios by age, sex and level of education for all countries to 2100. Glob. Environ. Change 42, 181–192 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Lane, S. D. From population control to reproductive health: an emerging policy agenda. Soc. Sci. Med. 39, 1303–1314 (1994).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  57. Malakar, Y. & Day, R. Differences in firewood users’ and LPG users’ perceived relationships between cooking fuels and women’s multidimensional well-being in rural India. Nat. Energy 5, 1022–1031 (2020).

  58. Demographic and Health Surveys Data (ICF, 2004–2017); https://dhsprogram.com/data

  59. Health-Related Microdata for Low- and Middle-Income Countries (IPUMS-DHS, 2017); https://www.idhsdata.org/idhs/

  60. The DHS Program Spatial Data Repository (ICF, 2020); http://spatialdata.dhsprogram.com/home/

  61. Belmin, C. A Dataset of Harmonized DHS Regions (GitLab, 2019); https://gitlab.pik-potsdam.de/belmin/dhs_region_harmonization

  62. Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP, 2020); https://ucdp.uu.se/

  63. Wickham, H. et al. Welcome to the tidyverse. J. Open Source Softw. 4, 1686 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  64. Croissant, Y. & Millo, G. Panel data econometrics in R: the plm package. J. Stat. Softw. 27, 1–43 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  65. Xie, Y. in Implementing Reproducible Research (eds Stodden, V. et al.) 3–31 (Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2018).

  66. Piburn, J. Wbstats: Programmatic Access to the World Bank API (ORNL, 2016).

  67. Watson, O. J., FitzJohn, R. & Eaton, J. W. Rdhs: an R package to interact with the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program datasets. Wellcome Open Res. 4, 103 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  68. Elkasabi, M. Calculating fertility and childhood mortality rates from survey data using the DHS.rates R package. PLoS ONE 14, e0216403 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

R.H. acknowledges funding from the EPICC (East Africa Peru India Climate Capacities) project, which is part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI). The German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) supports this initiative on the basis of a decision adopted by the German parliament. The authors are grateful to S. Pachauri and N. Milojevic-Dupont for useful feedback on the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Metabolism and Impacts, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

    Camille Belmin, Roman Hoffmann, Peter-Paul Pichler & Helga Weisz

  2. Department of Cultural History & Theory and Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Camille Belmin & Helga Weisz

  3. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Wittgenstein Centre (IIASA, OeAW, University of Vienna), Laxenburg, Austria

    Roman Hoffmann

  4. Vienna Institute of Demography (OeAW), Wittgenstein Centre (IIASA, OeAW, University of Vienna), Vienna, Austria

    Roman Hoffmann

Authors
  1. Camille Belmin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Roman Hoffmann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Peter-Paul Pichler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Helga Weisz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

H.W. conceived the project; C.B. and R.H. designed methods; C.B. performed data preprocessing; C.B. performed statistical analyses; C.B., R.H., P.-P.P. and H.W. discussed methods and interpreted results; C.B. wrote the initial manuscript; C.B., R.H., P.-P.P. and H.W. wrote the final manuscript. P.-P.P. and C.B. prepared figures.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Helga Weisz.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Sustainability thanks Marina Fischer-Kowalski, Subhrendu Pattanayak and Julia Steinberger for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Marginal effects of access to modern energy on fertility by average number of schooling years.

Panel a, b) represent the effect on fertility of a one unit change in, respectively, access to electricity and access to modern cooking fuels depending on the region’s baseline level of schooling year in the first year available in our data. The solid line corresponds to the marginal effect and the dotted lines delimitate the 95% confidence intervals. Panel a, b) correspond to model M8 and M9 (Supplementary Table 7).

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–6, Methods 1–7, Notes 1 and 2, Tables 1–27 and Discussion.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Excel file with five sheets corresponding to the data frames necessary to produce the five panels of Fig. 2.

Source Data Fig. 3

Excel file with four sheets corresponding to the data frames necessary to produce the four panels of Fig. 3. For the maps (panel c and the inset), the data provided do not include the geometries that allow to plot the map but contain all the values of marginal effects for each country/region shown on the maps.

Source Data Fig. 4

Excel file with the data frame with effect size, standard errors and significance levels allowing to produce Fig. 4.

Source Data Fig. 5

Excel file with two sheets corresponding to the data frames necessary to produce the two panels of Fig. 5.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 1

Excel file with two sheets corresponding to the data frames necessary to produce the two panels of Extended Fig. 1.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Belmin, C., Hoffmann, R., Pichler, PP. et al. Fertility transition powered by women’s access to electricity and modern cooking fuels. Nat Sustain 5, 245–253 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00830-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00830-3

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing