Yormy Eliana Melo Poveda

This research analysed the effect of gender inequality on the economic growth of seventeen countries in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region from 1990 to 2016 using an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model with fixed effects and a quantiles via moments model. Electricity consumption from new renewable energy sources, general government capital stock, private capital stock, trade openness, and urban population were used as control variables, and a battery of preliminary and post-estimation tests were conducted to guarantee the adequacy and suitability of both methodologies. The OLS model with fixed effects supports that gender inequality negatively affects gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The quantiles via moments (QvM) model confirms the results of the OLS model with fixed effects and reveals that with increasing quantiles (25th, 50th, and 75th), gender inequality leads to decreases in LAC countries’ growth. LAC countries’ policymakers and institutions should improve gender equality to reach a higher development level and a more prosperous society. Developing policies that contribute to increasing women’s participation in the labour market, reducing the gender pay gap, supporting women’s education and training, constructing a more women-friendly and less patriarchal society, and developing measures to limit violence against women and early pregnancy and maternal mortality rates and increase women’s decision-making positions, particularly in public policy decision making, must be implemented.

Lack of access to clean cooking is one dimension of energy poverty that has called the attention of many international organizations and policymakers, due to the relevance of cooking, as an energy service, in the satisfaction of essential needs. The present paper has two central objectives: it intends to characterize the population with energy deprivation for cooking and detect if their characteristics are coincident in Brazil and Argentina, and it analyses whether the selection of traditional fuels for cooking is related to the presence of other socioeconomic deprivations. To fulfill these objectives, an analysis of descriptive statistics is performed, and logistic models are estimated during the period 2004-2014. From the descriptive analysis, it is found that the socioeconomic characteristics of the population that presents energy deprivation in cooking are markedly different from those that are not deprived in this dimension. In turn, there is a strong dependence between the multidimensional deprivations and energy poverty in cooking.