The Impact of Clean Water Access on Women’s Education: Evidence from Malawi

For decades, Malawi has struggled to use its limited resources efficiently to create meaningful improvements in the quality of life of Malawians, particularly for women, who are disproportionately economically disadvantaged. Similarly, the country has faced persistent challenges in achieving sustained national economic growth. Education is widely hypothesized to be a key driver of improvements in the quality of life and of economic growth in developing nations such as Malawi. Although prior research suggests a connection between water access and women’s education, evidence for such a relationship is scarce. I investigate the impact of a large-scale water access project in Malawi on women’s educational attainment, with particular attention to differences across age and wealth. I find credible evidence that the water access project significantly increased educational attainment among young women. Specifically, my results suggest that those exposed to the project attained an average of seven years of school- ing, compared to an attainment of 5.5 years among unexposed counterparts. These results could have broad implications for infrastructure policy in Malawi and similar regions.