Powering Education: Evaluating Kenya's Last Mile Connectivity Program Using Distance-Based Instrumental Variable

This paper estimates the causal effect of household electrification on children’s educational outcomes in Kenya using 2014 and 2022 DHS data. To address endogeneity, I instrument electricity access with Euclidean distance to a hypothetical pre-1989 transmission network, exploiting differential electrification expansion under Kenya’s Last Mile Connectivity Program as additional identifying variation. Electrification has no significant effect on school enrollment, consistent with Kenya’s high baseline enrollment rate of 89%, but increases years of education by 0.603 years, which corresponds to a 24.3% gain relative to the mean. Effects are concentrated among girls, who gain 1.082 years of schooling compared to 0.18 years for boys, suggesting reduced domestic time burdens. Results are robust to excluding major cities and to using least-cost distance to the same hypothetical pre-1989 transmission network as an alternative instrument.