From the Hearth to the Farm

We present experimental evidence on the impact of improved cookstoves on household biomass management and women's economic empowerment in rural Ethiopia. Households were randomly assigned to receive a Mirt improved cookstove---shown to reduce fuelwood consumption by 50% and indoor air pollution by 90% under laboratory conditions---or a value-equivalent bag of wheat flour. Fifteen months after distribution, treated households reduced monthly firewood consumption by 35.5% and fuelwood collection time by 40.8%. We document a novel resource substitution effect: treated households applied 108% more animal dung as manure and 135% more crop residue as livestock fodder, reallocating organic inputs from the hearth to the farm. Women in treated households---who bear near-exclusive responsibility for fuel collection and cooking---were 12.5 percentage points more likely to participate in farming and 27.6 percentage points more likely to engage in poultry and livestock management. We find no significant effects on men's time allocation, confirming that the productivity gains are gender-specific. These results suggest that the social returns to clean cooking technologies significantly exceed their private returns, and that standard cost-benefit analyses omit important productivity gains accruing to women.