The relevance of reducing income inequality for eliminating urban-rural divide in clean cooking fuel accessibility: Evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

Alongside switching from the use of unclean to clean cooking fuels, reducing the urban-rural inequality in clean cooking fuel accessibility has become a major concern for developing countries, in particular. Hence, this study explores the factors influencing this clean cooking fuel accessibility divide across urban and rural areas in 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries. Overall, the results certify that worsening incidences of income inequality aggravate the urban-rural inequality in clean cooking fuel accessibility by respectively improving and deteriorating urban and rural clean cooking fuel access rates. Besides, institutional quality improvement is found to reduce this inequality by exerting a relatively higher clean cooking fuel accessibility-improving impact in rural areas. Moreover, influxes of international remittances are evidenced to reduce this inequality, especially by improving rural clean cooking fuel access rates. By contrast, technological innovation worsens urban-rural inequality in clean cooking fuel accessibility by enhancing and inhibiting clean cooking fuel access rates in urban and rural areas, respectively. Furthermore, heterogeneous findings are obtained when sub-samples of regional and income group categories are used for analytical purposes. Therefore, considering all these findings, it is highly recommended that the concerned nations adopt innovative income inequality-reduction policies, promote international migration of labor, improve institutional quality, and develop clean cooking fuel accessibility-enhancing technologies.