We examined the relationship between people’s health and their energy use in two ways, first unconditionally, without controlling for other household or individual characteristics, and second conditionally, which takes these characteristics into account.
In the first step, we found that people in poor health use less energy in the home as well as when travelling, compared to people in good health. This would support the “income” hypothesis outlined hong kong rcs data above: since people in poor health also tend to be on lower incomes, they might try to save on gas, electricity and motor fuels, and not be able to afford as many train rides and flights as richer people.
However, once we control for income, age, presence of children, employment status and other characteristics, people in poor health use more electricity in the home than healthier people.
This means that if we took two households who both have the same income, average age, number of children, etc., the one in which household members rated their health lower uses more electricity. In all other areas, households in poorer health still use the same (gas) or less (travel) amount of energy. Thus there is some evidence for the “mobility” hypothesis, which means that people in poor health get out of the house less, and hence use more electricity than their counterparts, regardless of their other circumstances.