Fuel Poverty and Health

Abstract

For the past decade, fuel poverty has become a major health concern in developed countries. In this paper, we contribute to the literature by conducting the first study that seeks to determine if there exists a causal relationship between fuel poverty and self-assessed general health in a country with high-income equality and low rates of fuel poverty. The empirical findings in this thesis add to the debate on policy implications where energy efficiency is essential to combat health outcomes from fuel poverty. Economic preferences are validated using methods that have been previously published in studies and theoretical frameworks. Using linear regression, we examine the relationship between fuel poverty and health in Sweden through our own conducted survey. Health is the dependent variable, fuel poverty is the main independent variable, and income and education are our control variables. In the absence of the national median income and heating costs, the analysis could not use the after-housing costs that are mainly used in previous literature. Instead, the study uses the average housing costs. The study found a statistically significant relationship between fuel poverty and health, and our thesis concludes that fuel-poor populations are more likely to have poorer health than non-fuel-poor populations.