Multidimensional energy poverty and human capital development: Empirical evidence from India

Energy poverty is believed to have crucial socio-economic impacts on people's lives, making it a major concern for the policy agenda in many countries, especially in the Global South. Evidence-based inferences on the antecedents and outcomes of energy poverty would aid policymakers in the formulation of better-informed policy decisions. However, measuring energy poverty at the micro-level has always been a challenge, especially in developing countries. This study uses household-level survey data from India to construct a multidimensional measure of energy poverty, which focuses on quantifying energy deprivation, covering both accessibility to and affordability of a broad range of energy forms, and examines its impact on human capital development indicators. Our instrumental variable-based estimations reveal that energy poverty has significant negative effects on children's health and educational achievements. Our results are robust to alternative ways of measuring energy poverty, a suite of estimation approaches, and other sensitivity checks. •We examine the effect of Energy Poverty on Human Capital Development.•We use data from the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS).•We measure energy poverty multidimensionally.•An increase in energy poverty is associated with a decrease in human development outcomes.•We use state-level energy prices as an instrument to address the endogeneity??.