Deciphering the moderation influence of economic policy uncertainty in the dynamics of energy poverty-government expenditure nexus in SSA

Concerns have been raised regarding the erosion of fiscal responsibility caused by economic policy uncertainty as a result of global pandemics and economic uncertainty. However, no systematic examination of the link between energy poverty and economic policy uncertainty has been conducted to date. This study adds considerably to the literature on energy poverty by investigating whether economic policy uncertainty affects energy poverty and if economic policy uncertainty moderates the relationship between government spending and energy poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The link was confirmed using data from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL), and panel quantile regression (PQR) models. The results from CS-ARDL show that (1) economic policy uncertainty (EPU) exerts energy poverty, (2) government expenditure hampers energy poverty, and (3) the interactive influence of economic policy uncertainty on government expenditure on energy poverty is negative. The results of PQR are diverse. Regarding the interaction effect, we find a positive and significant impact of the interaction of EPU with GXP on energy poverty in the 50th and 75th quantiles of 0.116 and 1.347, respectively, thus corroborating the results of the non-interactive model. By contrast, a significant negative interaction effect is observed only in the 25th quantile. The study offers some policy crucial policy implications for policymakers to make energy accessible to the SSA population.