Growing Up in Energy Poverty: Health Inequalities, Policy Invisibility and Children’s Agency

Energy poverty has become an increasingly prominent social concern across Europe, with growing evidence linking inadequate access to domestic energy services to housing inequalities, financial hardship and adverse health outcomes. While research and policy have made significant progress in documenting these impacts and in giving progressive space to lived experiences, qualitative and emotional aspects, the experiences of children remain largely absent from existing frameworks. Energy poverty is typically analysed and addressed at the household level, implicitly assuming that deprivation affects all household members in similar ways. As a result, children are often treated as passive dependents rather than as individuals whose well-being, development and everyday lives are shaped by the material conditions of the home. The research intends to examine energy poverty from a child-centred perspective. It explores three interrelated questions: how energy poverty affects children’s health and well-being, how children are recognised within energy poverty policy frameworks, and how children themselves experience and interpret energy deprivation in their daily lives. The research combines quantitative analysis, policy analysis and participatory research with children in order to capture the multiple dimensions through which energy poverty affects childhood. The first empirical study uses secondary data from the Barcelona Health Survey to examine associations between energy poverty and children’s physical and mental health outcomes. The second study analyses European and national policy documents to investigate the extent to which children are explicitly recognised within energy poverty policies and governance frameworks. The third study draws on participatory workshops and child completed survey data in Barcelona to explore how children understand and navigate energy poverty within their everyday environments. The thesis also builds a conceptual framework combining insights from energy justice and care ethics. Energy justice highlights structural inequalities and issues of recognition within energy systems, while care ethics helps outline the relational and everyday dynamics through which energy poverty is experienced and managed within households. The findings show that children are both materially affected by energy poverty and structurally overlooked within existing research and policy frameworks. By combining population-level analysis, policy examination and children’s own accounts, the thesis demonstrates the limits of household-centred approaches and argues for a more explicit recognition of children as subjects of concern in energy poverty research and governance. In doing so, it contributes empirical evidence on the health impacts of energy poverty in childhood, highlights gaps in policy recognition, and introduces participatory approaches that foreground children’s perspectives within debates on energy justice and care. The empirical core of the thesis is presented through the following publications: 1. Paper 1: The Association of Energy Poverty and Child Health in the City of Barcelona. (https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/11/5961) 2. Paper c2: Empowering Whose Future? A European Policy Analysis of Children in Energy Poverty. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629623003882) 3. Paper 3: Children’s Voices: Exploring Children’s Perceptions of Energy Poverty in Barcelona (in revision)