Gathering fuelwood for cooking and heating represents a considerable time burden for households in rural Vietnam. In this paper we examine the effects of fuelwood use on children’s school attendance using a panel of households from the Vietnam Living Standards Survey. We match individual households to satellite imagery measuring leaf coverage at the time and location of each survey, providing a robust instrument to examine the impacts of resource collection on schooling. We find that using fuelwood as the primary energy source is associated with an 84 percentage point decrease in the likelihood of school enrollment. We also find mixed evidence that girls may be affected more severely than boys, but we are unable to rule out equal impacts across genders. Our results suggest that household energy choices and diminishing resource availability can have a lasting impact on childhood schooling and long-run poverty.

收集薪柴做饭和取暖对于越南农村的家庭来说是一个相当大的时间负担。在本文中，我们通过越南生活水平调查中的一个家庭小组研究了薪柴使用对儿童入学率的影响。我们在每个调查的时间和地点将单个家庭与卫星图像进行比对，以测量叶子的覆盖范围，从而为检验资源收集对学校教育的影响提供了强有力的工具。我们发现使用薪柴作为主要能源与入学的可能性降低了84个百分点有关。我们还发现混杂的证据表明，女孩可能比男孩受到的影响更大，但是我们不能排除性别平等的影响。