Description:

Speaker: Ludovica Mosillo 

Title: The Unequal Effects of Load Shedding in South Africa

Abstract: Rationing is a common approach to managing resource crises such as water or electricity shortages in fast growing developing economies. This strategy often involves rotating the availability of resources across geographical regions, typically without differentiating based on local needs or demand. The aim of this project is to assess whether rationing can exacerbate existing economic inequalities. I study the case of South Africa, where the national power utility, introduced a schedule of rotating power outages (“load shedding”) to be enacted in periods of low supply to mitigate the risk of countrywide blackouts.  Starting in 2019 power interruptions became a frequent occurrence, with households experiencing an average of 1,343 hours of outages in 2023 alone. I exploit high frequency night light satellite data to show that, even though load shedding was equally implemented across neighborhoods, the rotating power outages disproportionately affect the poorer strata of the population.