Measuring Energy Poverty and Its Impact on Economic Growth in Pakistan

Shafqut Ullah, Muhammad Khan and Seong-Min Yoon
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Shafqut Ullah: Department of Economics, National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad 44000, Pakistan
Muhammad Khan: Department of Social Sciences, Islamabad (Campus), IQRA University, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 19, 1-19

Abstract: During the last two decades, energy poverty has captured the growing attention of researchers and policymakers due to its strong association with economic poverty and poor economic performance. This study uses a broad set of macro level indicators and makes the first attempt to measure energy poverty and its impact on economic growth of Pakistan over the period of 1990 to 2017. Our energy poverty indicator considers four main dimensions of energy poverty, namely, energy services, clean energy, energy governance and energy affordability. A composite value of the energy poverty index shows that although the overall energy poverty has reduced in Pakistan during the selected sample period, the country shows an increasing dependence on polluted energy supply to meet its growing energy demand. In the second stage of investigation, the study tests the neoclassical growth theory where we incorporate energy poverty along with human capital as a source of economic growth. The main findings show a stable short-run cointegration between energy poverty and economic growth. These strong negative linkages between energy poverty and economic growth for the sample economy complement the previous literature on the subject.

Keywords: energy poverty; economic growth; energy governance; multidimensional poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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