Energy poverty and education: empirical evidence from Vietnam

Abstract

Education has long been recognized for the benefits it provides to a nation and its citizens in both short term and long term. Among the factors that can exert negative effects on education, energy has consistently emerged as a prominent issue in recent years. For that reason, I decided to explore the relationship between energy poverty and education in Vietnam using the VHLSS 2014, 2016, and 2018 datasets. Adopting two regression models, tobit and logistic, the study discerned a significant adverse influence of energy poverty on the education status of households, with heterogeneous impacts across socio-economic regions, residential areas, and demographic characteristics. It reveals that the education status of households residing in two mountainous regions, Northern midlands and mountain areas and Central Highlands, rural areas, those with low educational attainment, and those with low income is most profoundly impacted by energy poverty. And the proportion of households experiencing energy poverty, as well as the rate of households dropped out is higher compared to the remaining groups. The findings are robust not only through estimation methods that control for endogeneity but also through estimates using alternative weights and cut-offs, and energy poverty represented by deprivations in daily life. In closing, the study also proposes several solutions to the issue of energy poverty and education.