Does Energy Poverty Reduce Rural Labor Wages? Evidence From China’s Rural Household Survey

Frontiers in Energy Research

Wei-kang Zeng¹  Zi-gui Chen²  Wei-ping Wu³  Si-wen Gong⁴ 

[1] Key Laboratory of Digital Economy and High Quality Development, Hunan University of Technology and Business, Changsha, China;Key Laboratory of Digital Economy and High Quality Development, Hunan University of Technology and Business, Changsha, China;Design and Art Institute, Hunan University of Technology and Business, Changsha, China;Key Laboratory of Digital Economy and High Quality Development, Hunan University of Technology and Business, Changsha, China;School of Economy and Trade, Hunan University, Changsha, China;School of Finance, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China;

关键词: energy poverty;    wages;    labor heterogeneity;    rural workers;    education effect;    health effect;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fenrg.2021.670026

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Eliminating energy poverty is helpful to get rid of the vicious circle between the lack of adequate and affordable energy services and low income in rural areas. We deconstruct energy poverty into extensive energy poverty and intensive energy poverty and analyze the net effect and its heterogeneity of energy poverty on rural labor wages with micrometric methods, as well as further investigate the impact mechanism from education effect and health effect. The results show that both extensive energy poverty and intensive energy poverty have a significant negative effect on the wages of rural workers, and the marginal effect of extensive energy poverty on the wages of rural workers is lower than that of intensive energy poverty. In addition, the net effect of energy poverty on the wages of rural workers shows labor heterogeneity and regional heterogeneity, and the inhibition effect to low skilled workers and workers with middle wage and in the Western region is the most obvious. Furthermore, energy poverty will limit the access of rural workers to education and damage their health, and then inhibit their productivity and wage. Our results suggest that enhancing the accessibility of energy consumption in rural areas and reducing the incidence of energy poverty are critically essential, and the implementation and optimization of energy poverty alleviation policy should give full consideration to labor force heterogeneity and regional heterogeneity.

【 授权许可】

CC BY