To heat or to heal: the uneasy trade-off between energy and healthcare expenditure in Central Asia

Sevara Tokhtaeva¹Obid Khakimov²Bahtiyor Eshchanov^3,4*

• ¹W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States
• ²Center for Economic Research and Reforms, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
• ³Fiscal Institute under the State Taxation Committee, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
• ⁴Management Development Institute of Singapore in Tashkent, Tashkent, Tashkent, Uzbekistan

The influence of housing hazards on healthcare becomes a serious problem taking into account the past and present consideration of international energy laws. In this empirical study energy poverty was examined to reveal its impact on health-oriented spending, in the case of Tajikistan for the year 2013. Our analysis demonstrated the existence of the negative effect of fuel poverty on healthcare expenditure, where different income groups were analyzed. The findings presented that families with high and middle incomes experience a low level of energy poverty, which implies that the health expenses of households from these income classes are not affected by the energy poverty level. Low low-income group, though, is considered to be fuel-poor due to its energy poverty level that prevails at 10%. Nevertheless, very low-income group families live in extreme fuel poverty, as they spend nearly half of the budget on fuel expenditure. The results provide evidence that fuel poverty affects health negatively and that effect is deferred. This fuels poverty, which results in poorer health over time. This paper also investigates the impact of fuel expenditure on healthcare spending. The results showed a negative correlation between the two observed variables. The model is controlled by dwelling size, location of housing, and dwelling type, which demonstrates a significant impact on healthcare expenditure. Additionally, household size was found to be highly statistically significant at a 95% confidence interval, holding all the other things constant.Regarding the policy, this paper brings up the point about investments made into housing energy schemes to make them more efficient and thus, decrease fuel poverty to help indicators for health improve. It adds to the suggestion that the conditions in the household that reduce fuel poverty become a drive for decreasing public costs for healthcare. The results indicated that two income groups, very low and low, experience proportionally higher healthcare expenditure owing to fuel poverty, foregrounding the necessity for policy intervention.