Energy Consumption, Economic Growth, and Human Development Index Evidence from SAARC Economies

Abstract

The majority of energy used globally is attributed to human activities. To enumerate exactly how energy consumption affects the process of human development, however, may be necessary. There is much work to be done in this area of inquiry. The association between energy consumption, economic growth, and the HDI is therefore explored in this study. For this purpose, we used the panel data of SAARC countries from 1971 to 2019. Data is taken from the World Bank and human development reports. This purpose of study is to investigate the connections among energy use, economic growth, HDI, trade openness, environmental variables, and urbanization in the context of SAARC economies. In this work, we utilized the Housman test, the random effect model and the fixed effect model. This study shows that energy consumption has a negative but significant impact on the human development index.