Objective vs. subjective fuel poverty and self-assessed health

Abstract

Policies towards fuel poverty often use relative or absolute measures. The effectiveness of the official indicators in identifying fuel poor households and assessing its impact on health is an emerging social policy issue. In this paper we analyse objective and perceived fuel poverty as determinants of selfassessed health in Spain. In 2014, 5.1 million of her population could not afford to heat their homes to an adequate temperature. We propose a latent class ordered probit model to analyse the influence of fuel poverty on self-reported health in a sample of 25,000 individuals in 11,000 households for the 2011-2014 period. This original approach allows us to include a 'subjective' measure of fuel poverty in the class membership probabilities and purge the influence of the 'objective' measure of fuel poverty on self-assessed health. The results show that poor housing conditions, fuel poverty, and material deprivation have a negative impact on health. Also, individuals who rate themselves as fuel poor tend to report poorer health status. The effect of objective fuel poverty on health is stronger when unobserved heterogeneity of individuals is controlled for. Since objective measures alone may not fully capture the adverse effect of fuel poverty on health, we advocate the use of approaches that allow a combination of objective and subjective measures and its application by policy-makers. Moreover, it is important that policies to tackle fuel poverty take into account the different energy vectors and the prospects of a future smart and integrated energy system. Abstract.Policies towards fuel poverty often use relative or absolute measures. The effectiveness of the official indicators in identifying fuel poor households and assessing its impact on health is an emerging social policy issue. In this paper we analyse objective and perceived fuel poverty as determinants of self-assessed health in Spain. In 2014, 5.1 million of her population could not afford to heat their homes to an adequate temperature. We propose a latent class ordered probit model to analyse the influence of fuel poverty on self-reported health in a sample of 25,000 individuals in 11,000 households for the 2011-2014 period. This original approach allows us to include a 'subjective' measure of fuel poverty in the class membership probabilities and purge the influence of the 'objective' measure of fuel poverty on self-assessed health. The results show that poor housing conditions, fuel poverty, and material deprivation have a negative impact on health. Also, individuals who rate themselves as fuel poor tend to report poorer health status. The effect of objective fuel poverty on health is stronger when unobserved heterogeneity of individuals is controlled for. Since objective measures alone may not fully capture the adverse effect of fuel poverty on health, we advocate the use of approaches that allow a combination of objective and subjective measures and its application by policymakers. Moreover, it is important that policies to tackle fuel poverty take...

Bibliometric Literature Analysis of a Multi-Dimensional Sustainable Development Issue: Energy Poverty

“…There are also two indicators based on self-reporting household conditions, namely the "EU survey on income and living conditions" and the "Survey on perceptions and statements from households" [13]. Finally, it should be noted that energy or fuel poverty may change, based on subjective and objective measurements, and may lead to different results, as reported by Price et al [41] and Llorca et al [42].…”

Fuel poverty and financial distress

“…Whilst the measurement of fuel poverty remains somewhat contested ( Deller et al, 2021 ; Thomson, 2020 ), recent literature has drawn upon the strengths of objective and subjective approaches by employing both sets of indicators (see e.g. Awaworyi Churchill et al, 2020 ; Kahouli, 2020 ; Llorca et al, 2020 ; Awaworyi Churchill and Smyth, 2021 ). The seminal work of Waddams Price et al (2012) evaluates the positive yet complex overlap between official objective indicators and subjective indicators.…”

The ‘vicious cycle’ of energy poverty and productivity: insights from 45 developing countries

“…In the literature, human capital accumulation is argued as one of the main drivers of productivity (Chang et al 2016 ), while EP is found to have negative impacts on people’s living standards, health, and income (Chevalier and Ouédraogo 2009 ; Llorca et al 2020 ). Thus, EP may lead to a deterioration in human capital since people have to spend more time collecting basic materials for living (Chevalier and Ouédraogo 2009 ).…”

“…Most detrimentally, EP is documented as the cause of degradation of individual well-being and health (e.g. see Kose ( 2019 ), Llorca et al ( 2020 )). Recently, Amin et al ( 2020 ) find that EP causes a decrease in economic development in both the short- and long-run in a sample of seven South Asian countries from 1995 to 2017.…”