Abstract

Pakistan is facing an energy crisis and is also severely affected by climate change. Moreover, Pakistan is not doing well as far as health outcome indicators are concerned. The causal nexus among energy, environment, and health outcomes is well-established in literature. Besides, financial development also grabs the attention of health outcome literature as financial development can play a significant role in improving health outcomes. Thus, this study was conducted to test the causal nexus among energy consumption, environmental degradation, financial development, and health outcomes in the case of Pakistan. This study proxies health outcomes with life expectancy and infant mortality. Time series data have been analyzed through different econometric techniques, such as unit root tests, cointegration techniques, causality techniques, and cointegration regressions. Moreover, this study not just discovers the causal direction among variables but also determines the strength of causality through variance decomposition. Results of the study confirm that all variables of the study are cointegrated in the long run. The causality analysis reveals that unidirectional causality is running from energy consumption and environmental degradation to health outcomes, whereas bidirectional causality is found between financial development and health outcomes in the long run. Besides, this study also determines the effect of energy, environmental degradation, and financial development in the health outcome model and finds that energy and financial development can help Pakistan to improve health outcomes. Policy implications are recommended for Pakistan.

Highlights

  • IntroductionMost developing countries are fulfilling their energy needs with fossil fuels to uplift living standards, to generate job opportunities, and for sound economic growth

  • Sound and persistent economic growth is essential for developing countries to address socio-economic problems such as food security, poverty, and a lack of basic health facilities.a sufficient energy supply is necessary for economic growth and development as energy is considered the backbone of economic development

  • The results of this study showed that there is a unidirectional causality from energy consumption to life expectancy, as well as to infant mortality in Algeria, Benin, Congo, Egypt, Senegal, South Africa, and Morocco, whereas bidirectional causality is found between energy and life expectancy and between energy consumption and infant mortality in the case of Nigeria [5]

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Most developing countries are fulfilling their energy needs with fossil fuels to uplift living standards, to generate job opportunities, and for sound economic growth. Developing countries have to maintain sustainable economic growth to tackle health and environmental challenges [4]. In a study they carried out, Youssef et al [5] argued that energy consumption and health outcomes have a strong relationship. They emphasized that access to energy produces positive health effects as it reduces absenteeism in schools and, enhancing energy efficiency will ensure an increase in life expectancy and result in a reduction of infant mortality

Methods
Results
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call