Objective and subjective measures of fuel poverty

Catherine Waddams Price, Karl Brazier and Wenjia Wang

Energy Policy, 2012, vol. 49, issue C, 33-39

Abstract: As energy prices continue to rise to reflect the real cost of carbon, the numbers of households in fuel poverty is increasing rapidly. This paper uses a unique data set to explore one alternative measure of fuel poverty based on whether consumers feel able to afford their energy, similar to one introduced by the government a few years ago. We explore the links between an expenditure based and our subjective measure of fuel poverty and compare these differences with those between official measures. Amongst low income households, 28% spent more than a tenth of their income on energy in the home, and so would be likely to qualify as fuel poor under the most usual definition; but only 16% felt unable to afford sufficient energy to keep their homes warm. Amongst this group who felt they had difficulty in affording sufficient energy, less than half were ‘expenditure’ fuel poor. The paper argues that reintroduction of a self-reported measure by the government would be a valuable aid to policy development.

Keywords: Fuel poverty; Subjective measures; Data mining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (95)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421512000882
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:enepol:v:49:y:2012:i:c:p:33-39

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2011.11.095

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().