Multidimensional energy poverty and human capital development: Empirical evidence from India

Abstract

Energy poverty is believed to have crucial socio-economic impacts on people's lives, making it a major concern for the policy agenda in many countries, especially in the Global South. Evidence-based inferences on the antecedents and outcomes of energy poverty would aid policymakers in the formulation of better-informed policy decisions. However, measuring energy poverty at the micro-level has always been a challenge, especially in developing countries. This study uses household-level survey data from India to construct a multidimensional measure of energy poverty, which focuses on quantifying energy deprivation, covering both accessibility to and affordability of a broad range of energy forms, and examines its impact on human capital development indicators. Our instrumental variable-based estimations reveal that energy poverty has significant negative effects on children's health and educational achievements. Our results are robust to alternative ways of measuring energy poverty, a suite of estimation approaches, and other sensitivity checks.