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In this study we suggest that a more careful and systematic understanding of fuel poverty can be developed through a multidimensional approach to the relationship between monetary poverty, residential energy efficiency, and heating restriction. Our objective is to provide new ways to better identify those who suffer the most from fuel poverty to optimize policy. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to measure poverty in three steps following Sen (1979): (i) combining poverty characteristics into an aggregate measure involving a fuel poverty index (FPI), (ii) identification and comparison of poor people according to existing and new definitions and (iii) testing the robustness of the fuel poverty composite indicator. Our results show that the usual measures reveal a gap that does not consider all the dimensions of fuel poverty, excluding those who are at or above a certain threshold, but who are nevertheless vulnerable. The multidimensional approach enables us to consider all the components of fuel poverty.

Between 50 and 125 million Europeans are unable to afford the energy needed for adequate heating, cooking, light, and use of appliances in the home. Tackling fuel poverty has thus become a public policy challenge. In this paper, we assess the effectiveness of social energy subsidies and social housing to reduce fuel poverty. The literature reports that rising fuel prices, low incomes, and energy-inefficient housing are the main causes of fuel poverty. Existing public policies focus mainly on price-and income-based measures to reduce fuel poverty, such as social energy subsidies. This type of policy is palliative as it does not permit to sustainably eradicate fuel poverty. Other policies aim to encourage renovation in order to improve energy efficiency. Those policies are curative as they sustainably reduce one cause of fuel poverty : energy inefficiency. In this paper, we focus on another public policy to tackle fuel poverty : social housing. We believe that this policy could be preventive, as the literature reports the better energy efficiency of social housing. We use matching methods and find that living in social housing decreases fuel poverty by 5.4% to 9.1%. On the contrary, social energy subsidies have no effect on fuel poverty.

This paper analyzes retirement decisions from a household perspective, treating the retirement timing of spouses as potentially interdependent choices. To identify the determinants of retirement decisions by couples and the effects of spousal retirement, this research estimates bivariate probit models in a multi-country setting. The results show a significant joint retirement trend: Both men and women are more likely to retire if their spouse already has retired. Strong asymmetric behaviors arise by gender though, with high crosscountry heterogeneity, reflecting institutional differences in both pension and public health systems.

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This article investigates the extent to which the distance to retirement affects low employment rates among European older workers, taking into account a key but often neglected determinant: health status. To begin, the study amends McCall's job search model, in which the job search behavior is treated as age dependent. Agents are heterogeneous according to two attributes: distance to retirement and health. This model leads to clear predictions, such that the closer the retirement, the greater the reservation wage and the lower people's search effort. Older workers also exhibit lower exit rates from unemployment, an effect that gets enhanced by health problems. This empirical work, based on a French survey, confirms the existence of a distance effect but also puts the greater impact of health status into perspective. The distance effect explains only part of the puzzle of older workers' employment.

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Précarité énergétique et santé : pour un programme politique commun ?Le changement climatique et la promotion de la santé publique sont aujourd'hui au coeur des préoccupations des citoyens et des gouvernements. Dans ce papier, nous contribuons à la littérature en évaluant le lien entre précarité énergétique et santé sur longue période. À l'aide de modèles probit dynamiques, nous examinons l'influence de la précarité énergétique sur la santé. Nous contrôlons la persistance de l'état de santé car nous considérons que l'état de santé est étroitement lié aux trajectoires de santé antérieures. L'état de santé et la précarité énergétique pouvant être affectées simultanément d'hétérogénéité non observée, nous corrigeons le biais d'endogénéité qui pourrait affecter nos résultats. Nous concluons que le fait d'être énergétiquement précaire multiplie par 7 le risque de mauvaise santé pour les individus dont la santé est déjà mauvaise et par 1,82 pour les individus en bonne santé. Lutter contre la précarité énergétique permet donc non seulement d'améliorer le bien-être des individus dans leur logement mais également leur santé, et donc d'éviter des coûts en santé.Mots clés: Précarité énergétique; Santé; Mauvaise qualité de l'habitat; Panel dynamique Codes JEL: C33; I14; Q41 Protecting and improving health and mitigation of climate change have a shared agenda. In this paper, we contribute to the literature by assessing the link between fuel poverty and health over a lengthy recent period. Using dynamic probit models, we examine the influence of fuel poverty on health. We control for state dependency of health as we regard health status to be closely related to previous health trajectories. Considering that unobserved heterogeneity might influence health status and fuel poverty simultaneously, we have corrected for the endogeneity bias that could affect our results. We conclude that being fuel-poor increases the risk of bad health by slightly more than a factor of 7 for those whose health is already poor and by 1.82 for those in good health. For policy makers, combatting fuel poverty reduces sources of discomfort which might also severely affect the health of a dwelling's inhabitants, and reduce health spendings.