Remittances and energy poverty: Fresh evidence from developing countries

A growing body of literature highlights the importance of access to energy for economic growth and its crucial role in achieving other sustainable development goals. Given that this branch of the literature is relatively new, the determinants of energy poverty have not yet been fully explored. This study takes a fresh look and contributes to the growing literature by providing one of the first studies of the effect of remittances on energy poverty in developing countries. We employed the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square and the Dynamic Ordinary Least Square. The results survive a battery of robustness checks, providing robust evidence supporting the claim that remittances reduce energy poverty in developing countries. Further analyses from the three-stage least squares estimator enable us to identify income inequality, economic growth, and education as some transmission channels through which remittances may reduce energy poverty. This study provides important implications in terms of policy recommendations.