Why health matters in the energy efficiency-consumption nexus? Some answers from a life cycle analysis

Sondès Kahouli () and Xavier Pautrel ()
Additional contact information
Xavier Pautrel: GRANEM - Groupe de Recherche Angevin en Economie et Management - UA - Université d'Angers - Institut Agro Rennes Angers - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: This paper shows that accounting for the growing interdisciplinary literature supporting the causality between energy efficiency and health and the empirical evidence reassessing the impor tance of health in workforce productivity, could explain a part of the paradoxal relationship found between energy efficiency and energy consumption. We build a 3-period overlapping generations model where we assume that residential energy inefficiency induces chronic disease for adults and bad health for elderly. We also assume that workers' health has an effect of their labor productivity. Our results suggest, in particular, that if mostly old (respectively young) people health is affected, the health impact of residential energy efficiency should have a backfire (resp. rebound) influence on residential energy consumption, by promoting precautionary saving (resp. by rising labor productivity). In policy terms, by showing that the link between energy efficiency and energy consumption is far from being just associated with technical conditions about preferences and/or production technology, our research emphasizes how crucial and complex are for governments the discussion and policy action dealing with the connection between energy conservation policies, health insurance system and growth.

Keywords: Energy efficiency; Health; Precautionary saving; Labor productivity; Overlapping generations model. JEL classification D58; Q43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-04-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-eff
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://univ-angers.hal.science/hal-03652352v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://univ-angers.hal.science/hal-03652352v1/document (application/pdf)

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:hal:wpaper:hal-03652352

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().