Impact of poverty and income inequality on the ecological footprint in Asian developing economies: Assessment of Sustainable Development Goals

Poverty, widening income inequality, and environmental degradation are very critical challenges to sustainable development while in the light of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), these challenges have been addressed in numerous past empirical studies. However, increasing environmental degradation is a big constraint in the path of sustainable development, poverty alleviation, and controlling income inequality as well. Hence, in this study, we empirically investigate the theoretically ambiguous and complex relationship between poverty, income inequality, and ecological footprint (EFP) for 18 Asian developing countries over the period 2006-2017. Empirical results obtained from the Driscoll-Kraay (D-K) standard error approach confirmed that poverty headcount contributing to environmental degradation in terms of EFP. Further, widening income inequality has a detrimental and harmful effect on the environment in Asian developing countries. The findings of this study also confirm the inverted U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC-Hypothesis) for investigated countries under the D-K methodology. This study provides some important policy implications for policymakers in the light of SDGs and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for the investigated region. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

Poverty, income inequality, and environmental degradation are critical challenges to sustainable development. This study empirically examines the relationship between these factors in 18 Asian developing countries and finds that both poverty and income inequality have detrimental effects on the environment, supporting the inverted U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve. The findings have important policy implications for the investigated region.