Environmental Quality in Economic Development in Low-Income Countries: Application of an EQT Model using Cross-Country Sample Data

Past studies have tended to inquire as to whether there is evidence that economic growth negatively impacts environmental quality. This remains and has always been an ample question to ponder with regard to the case of high-income countries. In terms of the low-income countries, however, the reverse question seems to be more appropriate given that the main concern in these countries is relatively more about growth than the environment. This paper develops an Environmental Quality Trajectory (EQT) model and applies it to provide a theoretical and empirical analysis of the importance of environmental quality, and how it impacts economic growth and development for developing countries. The study reveals some very important issues concerning the environment and the major factors that shape its role in economic growth and development in low-income countries. And most importantly, the study’s results appear to generally lend support to aspects of the Ruttan-Kuznets propositions about the relationship between income and environmental quality in developing countries, and at the same time seem to refute some aspects of it, to the effect that the implications of the environmental Kuznets curve does not seem to hold equally to all low-income countries per se, as ordinarily believed hitherto.