Energy poverty and public health: Global evidence
Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Energy Economics
Abstract
The impacts of energy poverty on a range of development goals have been widely examined in the literature;
however, how energy poverty affects public health has yet to be studied. Using annual data for a broad panel of
175 countries over the period 2000 to 2018, this paper investigates the effect of energy poverty on public health.
To identify the causal effect of energy poverty on public health and tackle the issue of endogeneity, we rely on
Oster's (2019) bound analysis and the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation. Our results
show that energy poverty has a detrimental effect on public health. We also find that living standards can serve as
a channel through which energy poverty influences health, and that countries with higher standards of living
weaken the negative effect of energy poverty on public health. Our results are robust across various specifications
and measures of health indicators. Our findings have important implications for policies in public health and
transitions to renewable energy.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
Energy poverty, Access to electricity, Health, Death rate, Life expectancy