Abstract

The Philippines is a country that faces many development challenges, including providing reliable and good quality electricity. Access to good quality electricity connection matters because it affects many aspects that increase productivity (e.g. education, health and business) and can make lives easier and more comfortable. While access has improved over time, many households still suffer from poor quality of their connection brought about by incidents of power outages, fluctuations and low voltage. This article attempts to examine whether better electricity quality improves household welfare. We apply a two-stage probit-ordered probit model to overcome endogeneity caused by reverse causation between electricity quality and household income. We find that households experiencing better electricity quality decrease the probability of remaining in the lowest income category by 23%.

摘要

菲律宾是一个面临许多发展挑战的国家，包括提供可靠和优质的电力。获得优质电力连接很重要，因为它会影响提高生产力的许多方面（例如教育、健康和商业），并使生活更轻松、更舒适。虽然随着时间的推移接入有所改善，但由于停电、波动和低电压事件，许多家庭仍然遭受连接质量差的困扰。本文试图检验更好的电力质量是否会改善家庭福利。我们应用两阶段 probit-ordered probit 模型来克服由电力质量和家庭收入之间的反向因果关系引起的内生性。