Human capital and energy poverty relationship: Empirical evidence from developing economies

Abstract

Access to clean and affordable energy remains United Nations' seventh sustainable development goal (SDG 7), illustrating its importance for the global community. The situation is particularly alarming in developing countries where a lack of access to electricity undermines their social and economic development. Against this backdrop, this study highlights the relevance of human capital in reducing energy poverty in emerging economies. For this purpose, the empirical investigation relies upon a large sample of 108 developing economies over the period 2000–2019. Our results, based on the Pedroni cointegration technique, confirm the presence of long-run relationships among the variables. Furthermore, the outcomes of dynamic ordinary least square estimations confirm the existence of a positive relationship between education and access to electricity in the sample economies. Moreover, we also confirm the influence of financial development and income in energy poverty reduction of the sample economies. These findings have some important policy implications for developing countries.