Energy Poverty and Depression in Rural China: Evidence from the Quantile Regression Approach

Jun Zhang, Yuang He and Jing Zhang
Additional contact information
Jun Zhang: School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Ave., Haidian Dist., Beijing 100872, China
Yuang He: School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Ave., Haidian Dist., Beijing 100872, China
Jing Zhang: School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Ave., Haidian Dist., Beijing 100872, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 2, 1-21

Abstract: Despite the growing awareness and interest in the impact of energy poverty on depression, studies in developing economies are relative limited, and there is a gap of knowledge of such impact among rural individuals in China. In this study, we investigate the impact of energy poverty on depression among rural Chinese individuals aged 16 and above, and our sample includes 13,784 individuals from 6103 households. With data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies, we apply the instrumental variable (IV) quantile regression approach to address the potential endogeneity of energy poverty and allow for heterogeneous effects of energy poverty on depression across individuals with different levels of depression. Our estimates from the IV quantile regression suggest a strong positive impact of energy poverty on depression at the upper quantile of depression scores, but no impact at the middle and lower quantiles. The primary results are robust and consistent with alternative energy poverty measures, and we find that energy poverty does not affect depression of low-risk individuals (with low depression scores), but it does affect that of high-risk individuals. We also find individual socio-demographic factors of age, gender, household size, religious belief, education, marriage and employment status play roles in affecting depression. The findings of this study generate policy implications for energy poverty alleviation and mental health promotion.

Keywords: energy poverty; depression; rural Chinese; quantile regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/2/1006/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/2/1006/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:2:p:1006-:d:726647

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().