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The impact of poverty on environmental quality, or the reverse impact, has already been addressed in many studies. In these earlier studies, CO2 emissions were frequently used to measure environmental quality, and inappropriate analysis methods were employed. Against this backdrop, the present study aimed to reinvestigate the relationship between poverty and the environment from a causality point of view, using a sample of 91 developing countries between 1990 and 2015. This study utilised the ecological footprint (EFP) to capture environmental quality instead of CO2 emissions. Second-generation tools were employed that addressed/mitigated heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence when analysing the panel data. The results showed evidence of dependency between the cross-sections and the sample was found to be heterogenous. The heterogeneous panel causality analysis results showed that while a bidirectional causality relationship between poverty and the ecological footprint was discovered for the global panel and the African region, no causality was detected for the developing countries in the Asian and Latin American & Caribbean regions. • The present study reinvestigated the relationship between poverty and environmental quality from causality point of view for of view for a sample of 91 developing countries during 1990–2015. • The study utilised ecological footprint to capture the quality of the environment instead of CO2. • The results of the heterogeneous panel causality analysis show that while bidirectional casualty relationship between poverty and ecological footprint is discovered for global panel and Africa, no causality is detected for the developing countries in Asia, Latin America, and Caribbean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]