The Association of Energy Poverty with Health and Wellbeing in Children in a Mediterranean City

OLIVERAS, Laura, BORRELL, Carme, GONZÁLEZ-PIJUAN, Irene, GOTSENS, Mercè, LÓPEZ, María José, PALÈNCIA, Laia, ARTAZCOZ, Lucía and MARÍ-DELL’OLMO, Marc (2021). The Association of Energy Poverty with Health and Wellbeing in Children in a Mediterranean City. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18 (11).

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Abstract

Children have been identified as being particularly vulnerable to energy poverty (EP), but little empirical research has addressed the effect of EP on children’s health and wellbeing, especially in southern Europe. In this work we aimed to provide an in-depth description of the distribution of EP by sociodemographic, socioeconomic and housing characteristics, as well as to analyse the association between EP and health and wellbeing in children in Barcelona. We performed a cross-sectional study using data from the Barcelona Health Survey for 2016 (n = 481 children under 15 years). We analysed the association between EP and health outcomes through prevalence differences and prevalence ratios (PR) and their 95% confidence interval (CI), using Poisson regression models with robust variance. In Barcelona, 10.6% of children were living in EP and large inequalities were found by sociodemographic, socioeconomic and housing characteristics. EP was strongly associated with poor health in children (PR (95% CI): 7.70 (2.86, 20.72)). Living in EP was also associated with poor mental health (PR (95% CI): 2.46 (1.21, 4.99)) and with more cases of asthma (PR (95% CI): 4.19 (1.47, 11.90)) and overweight (PR (95% CI): 1.50 (1.05, 2.15)) in children. It is urgent to develop specific measures to avoid such serious and unfair health effects on children.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	** From MDPI via Jisc Publications Router ** Licence for this article: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ **Journal IDs: eissn 1660-4601 **History: published 02-06-2021; accepted 30-05-2021
Uncontrolled Keywords:	energy poverty, fuel poverty, health, health inequalities, social determinants of health, children, southern Europe, urban
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18115961
SWORD Depositor:	Colin Knott
Depositing User:	Colin Knott
Date Deposited:	04 Jun 2021 12:08
Last Modified:	04 Jun 2021 12:15
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/28714

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