Energy poverty and gender equality in education: Unpacking the transmission channels

Access to energy is widely known to promote socio-economic development; however, the linkage between access to energy and gender equality in education and the channels through which energy poverty affects gender equality in education is not explored much in the empirical literature. We, therefore, examine whether access to electricity and clean cooking fuels and technologies contribute to gender equality in education for a panel of 98 countries between 2000 and 2021. Using the two-step generalized method of moments technique, we found that access to clean cooking fuels and technologies is associated with improvement in the gender parity index for secondary and tertiary education enrolment. Electrification was found to relate to improvement in the gender parity index for primary, secondary, and tertiary education. Further evidence showed that rural and urban access to clean cooking fuels and technologies and rural and urban electrification enhance gender equality in education. We identified that female literacy, female health, female employment, information, and communication technologies are the potential transmission channels through which access to electricity and clean cooking fuels and technologies could contribute to gender equality at all levels of education. Our findings are robust across alternative econometric estimators.