| Title: |
Cost of poverty: data-driven approaches to investigating poverty premiums in the United Kingdom ; The cost of poverty: data-driven approaches to investigating poverty premiums in the United Kingdom |
| Authors: |
Rasanga, Fiona Atieno |
| Contributors: |
Harrison, Tina; Calabrese, Raffaella; Smart Data Foundry |
| Publisher Information: |
The University of Edinburgh |
| Collection: |
University of Edinburgh: Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA) |
| Subject Terms: |
Poverty Premiums; Data-Driven; Policy Interventions; Capability Approach; Cross-Market Analysis |
| Description: |
This thesis examines the concept of poverty premiums in the United Kingdom, focusing on both their magnitude and underlying drivers. Poverty premiums emerge when low-income households pay more for the same goods and services than their wealthier counterparts. Although it is not new, recent increases in the cost of living, austerity measures, and global crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and international conflicts, have renewed academic and policy interest. Despite this attention, empirical research remains limited due to constrained access to granular datasets, which prevents the development of representative, consistent and individual-level measures of the poverty premium. As such, there is still little understanding of who among the poor is most affected and to what extent. Consequently, many poverty premium policy responses rely on broad, one-size-fitsall approaches that fail to capture the diverse and nuanced experiences of low-income households. The thesis addresses this gap by leveraging granular and large-scale datasets to empirically assess the prevalence and drivers of poverty premiums across key markets, to support the design of more targeted and equitable policy responses. The thesis is based on three papers, each addressing a distinct research question. The first paper, titled "Measuring the Energy Poverty Premium in Great Britain and Identifying Its Main Drivers Based on Longitudinal Household Survey Data", addresses the research questions: 1) How much poverty premium do poor households pay for energy usage? and 2) What are the drivers of energy premiums for gas and electricity consumption? This study proposes a novel approach, based on the Theory of Complaints, to quantify the magnitude of poverty premiums incurred by UK households for gas and electricity consumption. The study combines energy consumption data from the National Energy Efficiency Data Framework (NEED) and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), spanning 2010 to 2019, to estimate effective energy unit costs. These costs are ... |
| Document Type: |
doctoral or postdoctoral thesis |
| File Description: |
application/pdf |
| Language: |
English |
| ISSN: |
0140-9883 |
| Relation: |
Rasanga, F., Harrison, T., and Calabrese, R. Measuring the energy poverty premium in the UK and identifying its main drivers based on longitudinal household survey data. Energy Economics, 2024. ISSN 0140-9883. Publisher: Elsevier.; https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/44560; https://doi.org/10.7488/era/7077 |
| DOI: |
10.7488/era/7077 |
| Availability: |
https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/44560; https://doi.org/10.7488/era/7077 |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.49F2D21B |
| Database: |
BASE |