Child and youth fuel poverty: assessing the known and unknown

Kimberley O’Sullivan,Helen Viggers,Philippa Howden-Chapman,Lucy Telfar Barnard

doi:10.3351/ppp.0010.0001.0006

Abstract

Child and youth fuel poverty: assessing the known and unknown

Highlights

Fuel poverty, described as the inability to afford adequate household energy including heating, is estimated to affect one in four New Zealand (NZ) households (HowdenChapman et al, 2012)
In NZ, where households commonly rely on relatively inefficient plug-in electric heating, and building thermal quality is relatively poor, the cost of electricity is an important driver of fuel poverty
Accumulating evidence raises the concern that fuel poverty has important negative effects for children and young people, who have been under-represented in research investigating fuel poverty to date

Summary

Introduction

Fuel poverty, described as the inability to afford adequate household energy including heating, is estimated to affect one in four New Zealand (NZ) households (HowdenChapman et al, 2012). The overall matching method has a broad bias towards the null (Telfar Barnard et al, 2015) For this specific analysis, it is not known whether households with hospitalised children would have been more or less likely to seek WUNZ retrofits, so there is potential for treatment bias in the results, though the direction of the potential bias is unclear. Preliminary statistical analysis of initial data, undertaken with the youth researchers during the second set of workshops, indicates support for the hypothesis underlying the study, that cold housing is problematic for young people. Child and youth fuel poverty: assessing the known and unknown and valid data on youth experiences of cold housing and achieving true participation of the youth researchers, providing as much equality with adult researchers as possible

Discussion and conclusions

Findings

84. Child and youth fuel poverty: assessing the known and unknown