Can the Adoption of Renewable Energy Alleviate Income Inequality?
Evelina Méngova
What the paper says
The eradication of poverty and the alleviation of income inequality are key issues in economic development and the UN’s SDGs place particular emphasis on addressing these fundamental global challenges. This paper examines the impact of energy use, along with other key macroeconomic factors, on income inequality (measured by the Gini index) in a global panel of 170 countries from 1974 to 2023. The use of renewable energy is a particular focus of this research, since we explore whether income inequality can be reduced in an environmentally sustainable way. We find that general access to electricity, renewable energy consumption, energy use, GDP per capita, trade, and R&D spending all contribute to alleviating income inequality. Alternative and nuclear energy use, as well as fossil fuel energy consumption, also lower the Gini index. On the other hand, energy imports, the share of electricity generated by renewable power plants, population growth, unemployment, and inflation tend to worsen income inequality. FDI, as well as household savings, do not appear to have a statistically significant impact.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.