Abstract
Regardless of growing interest and awareness of the effect of energy poverty on mental health, studies on this linkage have mainly relied on unidimensional measures of energy poverty with much concentration on advanced economies. Employing a two-wave socioeconomic survey, we analyzed the impact of multidimensional energy poverty on mental health in Ghana. We found energy poverty to heighten the chances of being mentally unhealthy. Using prices of liquefied petroleum gas and electricity as instruments for multidimensional energy poverty, we found that a rise in energy deprivation is associated with a 0.562-, 1.494- and 1.867-fold increase in the odds of being mildly, moderately and severely depressed, respectively. Among the indicators of multidimensional energy poverty, a deprivation in household appliance ownership (refrigerator ownership), recorded the highest impact on the depression levels of household heads. We concluded by urging policymakers to adopt a holistic approach in solving issues of energy poverty where simultaneous attention is given to all the dimensions of energy poverty since they collectively have detrimental effects on mental health, especially in a developing country setting.
Highlights
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) seven (SDG 7) stresses “access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all” [1]
It can be observed that the Western, Volta, Ashanti and Upper East regions of Ghana recorded a rise in depression levels between 2010 and 2015
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind in a sub-Saharan African nation like
Summary
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) seven (SDG 7) stresses “access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all” [1]. Increment in electricity access between 1990 and 2016, as indicated by a United Nations (UN) report [2]. Despite this steady increase in access over the last few decades, the progress is skewed very much towards the global North and Asia, while the populace in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continues to live in darkness. In 2016, for example, over 600 million people in SSA lived without electricity, with about. A large proportion of these deaths prevail in SSA, as about 400 million people are estimated to continuously rely on biomass [4]
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