Role of ethnic diversity, temperature changes, and socio-economic conditions for residential energy use and energy expenditures: Evidence from the United States

Abstract

The current research explores the residential energy use and residential energy expenditure behavior, induced by ethnic diversity, income inequality and climate characteristics. In doing so, the authors use the data on United States from 1984Q1 to 2020Q4 and employ the recent multiple wavelet and quantile coherency methods. Based on the pairwise wavelet coherency results we find that as far as the coherence across the pairs-- residential energy use vs ethnic tensions again residential energy use vs socio economic conditions, and residential energy vs GINI measure of inequality is concerned there are indications of strong coherence during the short and medium term. The coherencies get intensified during periods of 2001, 2009 and 2020. The direction of arrows was left ward oriented demonstrating that lack of energy expenditure or alternatively speaking energy poverty precedes ethnic crisis. In contrary there are strong pairs of negative correlation in the (0.95|0.95) quantiles for residential energy expenditure and the interaction term on heating and cooling. Such findings imply that conditions of buildings are major drivers on the energy expenditure across time scales. The findings on hand are in line with the COP 26 declarations and report practical implications apropos the achievement of sustainable development goals.