Addressing rural energy poverty and rural-urban energy access gap in developing countries: does international remittances matter?

Alex O. Acheampong, Mariem Brahim and Janet Dzator

Applied Economics, 2025, vol. 57, issue 23, 2998-3015

Abstract: Alleviating rural energy poverty and inequality in rural-urban energy accessibility is a panacea for rural economic development. Researchers and policymakers have underscored the importance of remittances in socio-economic development; however, the role of remittances on rural energy poverty and disparity in rural-urban energy access remains under-researched area. This study, therefore, investigates whether remittances contribute to enhance rural energy poverty and rural-urban inequality in energy access in 135 developing countries from 2000–2020. Evidence from cross-sectional and endogeneity-corrected results supports that international remittance inflow substantially reduces rural poverty and rural-urban inequality in energy access. The results also indicate that the effect of remittance on rural energy poverty and rural-urban inequality in energy access depends on the state of countries’ financial development and GDP per capita, indicating that remittances alleviate rural energy poverty and inequality in rural-urban energy accessibility in countries with higher access to credit and per capita GDP. We documented that these findings differ across income groups. The policy implications are discussed.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2024.2331971 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:57:y:2025:i:23:p:2998-3015

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2024.2331971

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().