Energy poverty and its impacts on health and education: a systematic review

Abstract

Purpose People with energy poverty are denied the modern energy services such as cooking, lighting, heating, cooling and communication. These needs are all crucial to maintaining an acceptable level of living standards. This paper aims to examine the effects of energy poverty on health and education. Design/methodology/approach This systematic review was conducted using the 2009 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. The ScienceDirect, Scopus and Google Scholar databases were used to search the studies conducted between 2012 and 2022. Studies included in this review were searched with some combinations of keywords and saved in Mendeley Desktop for review and referencing. Of 1,745 articles retrieved after removing the duplicates from the databases, 22 met the inclusion criteria. Findings Out of the total 22 studies reviewed, six were conducted in Asia, six in Europe, four in Africa, three in developing countries and one each in North America, Australia and at global level. Results indicated that impacts of energy poverty on health and education were negative. Efforts should be made to improve the economic conditions of the population in order to allow them access to energy services to achieve higher levels of living. Practical implications As this systematic review excludes non-peer-reviewed literature, case studies, reports and theses, and only includes studies published between 2012 and 2022 in English language only, consequently, it may not provide an exhaustive overview of the literature on topic. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic review to investigate the relationship between energy poverty, health and education conducted here. The search methodologies involve systematic searches of databases and other manual searches. Considering the wide inclusion criteria, this review is useful as a general overview of the issues and identifies particular gaps in the existing evidence.