Empowering educational inequality reduction: Does energy poverty eradication matter?

To test the macroeconomic impact of energy poverty (EEPT) on educational inequality, a panel of 30 provinces from 2002 to 2021 is utilized to conduct an empirical check. Besides, heterogeneity of geographical location, administrative levels, and educational gender inequality is explored, and whether educational level and income inequality are valid paths is discussed. The primary conclusions insist that: (1) Greatly alleviating EEPT can efficiently narrow educational inequality, and reducing EEPT has a substantially more significant impact on lowering educational inequality for women than for men. EEPT has an inverted U-shaped relationship with gender inequality in education; (2) the influence of EEPT on provincial, male, and female educational inequality in the eastern area is insignificant, while the positive effect in the midwestern area is noticeable; EEPT has the most significant positive impact on educational inequality in rural areas, followed by town, and the smallest in urban areas; (3) the gradual increase of EEPT will expand the degree of gender inequality; and (4) the mechanism analysis proves that income inequality and educational level hold as transmission paths between EEPT and educational inequality. Based on these four findings, some policy implications are put forward.