The relationships among housing, energy poverty, and health: A scoping review

Abstract

As the demand for household energy has rapidly grown in the past few decades, there has been an increasing number of global populations that cannot afford adequate energy use, falling into energy poverty. Attaining clean, equitable and affordable energy is not only conducive to promoting residents' health and well-being but also to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. While housing is a critical factor affecting household energy consumption and an important social determinant of health, our knowledge of the linkage between energy poverty, housing and health has been fragmented. We conducted a comprehensive scoping review of the forty-eight articles, following Arksey and O'Malley's Framework, to explore how the relationship between energy poverty, housing and health has been understood and identify potential future research directions. Our analysis shows that energy poverty degrades the functionality of housing, making the health effects of energy poverty multifaceted, and poor housing quality and housing unaffordability facilitate the adverse effects of energy poverty on health. Low-income families, tenants, people with physical difficulties, older people, and children have tended to be investigated as the populations vulnerable to the challenges induced by energy poverty and housing hardships and the target groups for relevant policy interventions. Our review calls for an integrated theoretical framework to understand the relationship among energy poverty, housing and health and more empirical studies that can inform policy interventions.