Objective vs. Subjective Fuel Poverty and Self-assessed Health

Identification of fuel poverty and its impact on individuals is a growing social issue. Classifying households using subjective measures of fuel poverty yields different results than when objective measures are used. Moreover, there are assessment-related difficulties in establishing the effects on health and wellbeing, which hinders policy design to tackle this problem. We analyse the influence of several socioeconomic characteristics on self-reported health with special focus on fuel poverty and find that poor housing conditions, low income, material deprivation and fuel poverty have a negative impact on health.