The nexus between fuel, income, and housing poverty: Evidence from Egypt

Résumé En

Energy poverty is growing new dimension of inequality both in developed and developing economies. Here we develop an empirical model to examine the linkage between fuel, income, and housing poverty in developing countries. Our analysis focuses on Egypt, a country that has undergone rapid development and significant energy reforms in recent years. Employing a probit and ordered multinomial framework to data from the Egyptian HIECS Survey, a nationally representative sample of both households and dwellings, we estimate the fuel, income, and housing poverty extent and their key determinants. Our results show that households with low income, high energy, and high housing expenses represent about 16.42% of the total population (respectively, 7.43% for low income, high energy, and low housing expenses). Our findings on critical factors driving LIHC poverty types have some interesting policy implications for fuel poverty phenomenon understanding and inequality reduction in Egypt, not only for the LIHC definition but for any indicator of (fuel) poverty involving the post-housing (energy cost) concept.