Long-term Care Needs and Fuel Poverty among Older People: Beyond Energy Consumption and Affordability

作者：Javiera Cartagena‐Farias, Nicola Brimblecombe, Bo Hu, Sam Rickman · 发表于：Social Indicators Research · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1007/s11205-025-03653-3 · 被引用次数：3 · 研究领域：Energy and Environment Impacts、Health disparities and outcomes、Employment and Welfare Studies

Both financial disadvantage and poor housing conditions are recognised as social determinants of poorer health and health inequalities across and within countries. In the UK and some other nations, low income and housing problems in interaction manifest as 'fuel poverty'-a measure of a household's ability to keep their homes warm. In these countries, tackling fuel poverty has become a priority, not least because of the known negative effects on health. Nevertheless, there is no gold standard measurement of fuel poverty, and there is also, more importantly, scant evidence on the relationship between fuel poverty and the development of long-term care needs among older people, which is important as understanding this relationship could inform preventative policy interventions aimed at reducing care needs and associated costs. Older people spend a larger proportion of their time indoors and the role of fuel poverty has wider health and social care impacts that go beyond immediate household hardship. This paper i) develops a data-driven measure of fuel poverty that goes beyond household income and energy consumption, ii) explores whether fuel poverty is associated with the development of care needs, an increase in care needs, and/or a decline in mental health among older people, and iii) whether there are any inequalities in the role played by fuel poverty across more potentially vulnerable groups. We use the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a large representative sample of p...