Household Multidimensional Energy Poverty: Impact on Health, Education, and Cognitive Skills of Children in Ghana

Energy poverty in Sub-Saharan African countries continues to be of global concern. Its grave implications for the achievement of the sustainable development goal 7 (SDG 7) by 2030, validate this concern. Current studies, therefore, focus on analyzing the impact of energy poverty on child well-being, thus, their health, education, and cognitive skills. Despite this, studies in Sub-Saharan African countries where the highest energy poverty rates are remains scanty. Hence, using data from the current wave of the Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS 7), this paper analyzes multidimensional energy poverty and its impact on the health, education, and cognitive skills of children in Ghana. The multidimensional energy poverty analysis reveals that nearly 59% of children in Ghana are living in multidimensional energy-poor households. Further, the structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses show that a standard deviation increase in multidimensional energy poverty reduces child health, education, and cognitive skills by 0.155, 0.13, and 0.402 standard deviation respectively. The government through the Ministry of Energy and allied agencies and departments must commit to making modern energy accessible and affordable throughout the country to mitigate the negative impact of multidimensional energy poverty on child well-being.