Does Access to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) Reduce Women Household Burden? Evidence from India

Using the nationally representative Indian Time Use Survey, we study whether the use of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) as cooking fuel affects the time spent in cooking and employment activities for Indian rural women. We instrument use of LPG by a leave-one-out spatial instrument constructed by taking the average level of LPG use in the village where the average is calculated leaving the concerned household. We find no impact of LPG on the probability of women participating in cooking activities. However, use of LPG reduces (increases) time spent in cooking (employment) activities. We also find evidence of rebound effect where use of LPG leads to marginally more cooking events in a day. We find that LPG impact on time spent in cooking and employment is mostly driven by married women.