Quantifying the strategies to mitigate health vulnerability: unveiling the nexus of institutional quality with clean energy

More than two billion of the poorest global populations still depend on traditional fuel to fulfill their household energy requirements. These resources include animal dung, charcoal, wood, and crop wastes. These energy resources not only impact their health due to environmental pollution but also cause extreme climate events. The present study explores the non-linear analysis of clean energy poverty for cooking on health vulnerability and then extends its application using institutional quality as the moderator. This study uses panel data of 80 developing countries from 2002 to 2020 by applying the Bootstrap Panel Quantile Regression (BPQR) approach at different quantile groups. This study proved a U-shaped association between clean energy poverty and health vulnerability in all quantile groups. It shows that higher clean energy poverty increases health vulnerability in most developing countries. The interplay of institutional quality with clean energy poverty moves the turning point to the left side of the U-shaped curve at the middle and higher quantile groups. It shows that institutional quality minimizes the adverse effect of health vulnerability by using clean energy poverty in developing countries. Furthermore, industrialization and labor force participation show mixed effects across quantile groups. This study recommends that developing countries should pay special attention to strengthening institutional quality to mitigate health vulnerability even a lower access to clean energy.