Effects of renting on household energy expenditure: Evidence from Australia

Rohan Best and Paul Burke
Additional contact information
Rohan Best: Department of Economics, Macquarie University

CCEP Working Papers from Centre for Climate & Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University

Abstract: This paper uses household survey data from Australia to investigate whether renters face larger energy bills than otherwise similar households. We find that a negative unconditional effect of renting on residential electricity expenditure becomes positive when controlling for log net wealth, with renters on average spending about 8% more than otherwise similar households. This is a larger effect than in most prior studies. The effect operates via higher usage quantities rather than higher average prices, and a similar effect is found for overall residential energy expenditure including natural gas. Central to the story is that renters tend to have lower net wealth, and net wealth is associated with higher energy use due to reasons including additional appliance ownership. This makes net wealth an important control. The findings cast light on the potential for more ambitious policy responses to reduce energy-related disadvantages faced by renters in Australia. There is also scope for further research into whether similarly large effects are evident in other countries.

Date: 2022-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-ene and nep-reg
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ccep.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/fil ... p2202_best_burke.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Effects of renting on household energy expenditure: Evidence from Australia (2022)
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:een:ccepwp:2202

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CCEP Working Papers from Centre for Climate & Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCEP ().