IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jorssa/v177y2014i1p281-294.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is there a ‘heat-or-eat’ trade-off in the UK?

Author

Listed:
  • Timothy K. M. Beatty
  • Laura Blow
  • Thomas F. Crossley

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="rssa12013-abs-0001"> Do households cut back on food spending to finance the additional cost of keeping warm during spells of unseasonably cold weather? For households which cannot smooth consumption over time, we describe how cold weather shocks are equivalent to income shocks. We merge detailed household level expenditure data from older households with historical regional weather information. We find evidence that the poorest of older households cannot smooth fuel spending over the worst temperature shocks. Statistically significant reductions in food spending occur in response to winter temperatures 2 or more standard deviations colder than expected, which occur about 1 winter month in 40; reductions in food expenditure are considerably larger in poorer households.

Suggested Citation

  • Timothy K. M. Beatty & Laura Blow & Thomas F. Crossley, 2014. "Is there a ‘heat-or-eat’ trade-off in the UK?," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 177(1), pages 281-294, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jorssa:v:177:y:2014:i:1:p:281-294
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/rssa.2013.177.issue-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2003. "Measuring the Well-Being of the Poor Using Income and Consumption," NBER Working Papers 9760, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Bhattacharya, J. & DeLeire, T. & Haider, S. & Currie, J., 2003. "Heat or Eat? Cold-Weather Shocks and Nutrition in Poor American Families," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 93(7), pages 1149-1154.
    3. Dora Gicheva & Justine Hastings & Sofia Villas-Boas, 2010. "Investigating Income Effects in Scanner Data: Do Gasoline Prices Affect Grocery Purchases?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 480-484, May.
    4. Martin Browning & Thomas F. Crossley, 2009. "Shocks, Stocks, and Socks: Smoothing Consumption Over a Temporary Income Loss," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(6), pages 1169-1192, December.
    5. Paxson, Christina H, 1992. "Using Weather Variability to Estimate the Response of Savings to Transitory Income in Thailand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 15-33, March.
    6. Martin Browning & Thomas Crossley, 2003. "Shocks, Stocks and Socks," Department of Economics Working Papers 2003-07, McMaster University.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Beatty, Timothy K.M. & Tuttle, Charlotte, 2014. "The Effect of Energy Price Shocks on Household Food Security: Do Federal Assistance Programs Mitigate the Effects of Price Shocks," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 170546, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Tuttle, Charlotte & Beatty, Timothy K. M., 2017. "The Effects of Energy Price Shocks on Household Food Security in Low-Income Households," Economic Research Report 260484, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    3. Jakub Sokolowski & Aneta Kielczewska & Piotr Lewandowski, 2019. "Defining and measuring energy poverty in Poland," IBS Research Reports 01/2019, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    4. Friedman, Chanoch & Becker, Nir & Erell, Evyatar, 2014. "Energy retrofit of residential building envelopes in Israel: A cost-benefit analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 183-193.
    5. Beatty, Timothy K.M. & Tuttle, Charlotte, 2012. "The Effect of Energy Price Shocks on Household Food Security," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124791, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Kennedy, Ryan & Mahajan, Aseem & Urpelainen, Johannes, 2019. "Quality of service predicts willingness to pay for household electricity connections in rural India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 319-326.
    7. Beatty, Timothy K.M. & Blow, Laura & Crossley, Thomas F. & O'Dea, Cormac, 2014. "Cash by any other name? Evidence on labeling from the UK Winter Fuel Payment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 86-96.
    8. Rodrigo Lluberas, 2018. "Life‐Cycle Expenditure and Retirees’ Cost of Living," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(3), pages 385-415, September.
    9. Marlena Piekut, 2021. "Between Poverty and Energy Satisfaction in Polish Households Run by People Aged 60 and Older," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-30, September.
    10. Rodriguez-Alvarez, Ana & Orea, Luis & Jamasb, Tooraj, 2019. "Fuel poverty and Well-Being:A consumer theory and stochastic frontier approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 22-32.
    11. Castaño-Rosa, Raúl & Okushima, Shinichiro, 2021. "Prevalence of energy poverty in Japan: A comprehensive analysis of energy poverty vulnerabilities," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    12. Mattioli, Giulio & Lucas, Karen & Marsden, Greg, 2018. "Reprint of Transport poverty and fuel poverty in the UK: From analogy to comparison," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 114-125.
    13. Morris, J. & Genovese, A., 2018. "An empirical investigation into students' experience of fuel poverty," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 228-237.
    14. Mattioli, Giulio & Lucas, Karen & Marsden, Greg, 2017. "Transport poverty and fuel poverty in the UK: From analogy to comparison," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 93-105.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Melvin Stephens, Jr., 2006. "The Level and Composition of Consumption Over the Business Cycle: The Role of "Quasi-Fixed" Expenditures," NBER Working Papers 12388, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    3. Peter Kuhn & Peter Kooreman & Adriaan Soetevent & Arie Kapteyn, 2011. "The Effects of Lottery Prizes on Winners and Their Neighbors: Evidence from the Dutch Postcode Lottery," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2226-2247, August.
    4. Meghir, Costas & Pistaferri, Luigi, 2011. "Earnings, Consumption and Life Cycle Choices," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 9, pages 773-854, Elsevier.
    5. Kuhn, Peter J & Kooreman, Peter & Soetevent, Adriaan & Kapteyn, Arie, 2008. "The Own and Social Effects of an Unexpected Income Shock: Evidence from the Dutch Postcode Lottery," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt07k895v4, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    6. Beatty, Timothy K.M. & Tuttle, Charlotte, 2012. "The Effect of Energy Price Shocks on Household Food Security," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124791, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    7. Peter J. Kuhn & Peter Kooreman & Adriaan R. Soetevent & Arie Kapteyn, 2008. "The Own and Social Effects of an Unexpected Income Shock: Evidence from the Dutch Postcode Lottery," NBER Working Papers 14035, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Attanasio, Orazio & Kovacs, Agnes & Molnar, Krisztina, 2017. "Euler Equations, Subjective Expectations and Income Shocks," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 5/2017, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    9. Chetty, Raj, 2006. "A general formula for the optimal level of social insurance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(10-11), pages 1879-1901, November.
    10. Tuttle, Charlotte & Beatty, Timothy K. M., 2017. "The Effects of Energy Price Shocks on Household Food Security in Low-Income Households," Economic Research Report 260484, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    11. Thomas F. Crossley & Hamish W. Low, 2014. "Job Loss, Credit Constraints, and Consumption Growth," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(5), pages 876-884, December.
    12. Gervais, Martin & Klein, Paul, 2009. "Measuring consumption smoothing in CEX data," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 0906, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    13. Cristina Barceló & Ernesto Villanueva, 2010. "The response of household wealth to the risk of losing the job: evidence from differences in firing costs," Working Papers 1002, Banco de España.
    14. Pushan Dutt & V. Padmanabhan, 2011. "Crisis and Consumption Smoothing," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 491-512, 05-06.
    15. Stephen H. Shore & Todd Sinai, 2010. "Commitment, Risk, and Consumption: Do Birds of a Feather Have Bigger Nests?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(2), pages 408-424, May.
    16. Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2011. "The Effects of the Financial Crisis on Actual and Anticipated Consumption," Working Papers wp255, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    17. Orazio Attanasio & Krisztina Molnar, 2017. "Euler Equations, Subjective Expectations and Income Shocks," Economics Series Working Papers 820, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    18. Gervais, Martin & Klein, Paul, 2010. "Measuring consumption smoothing in CEX data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(8), pages 988-999, November.
    19. Beatty, Timothy K.M. & Tuttle, Charlotte, 2014. "The Effect of Energy Price Shocks on Household Food Security: Do Federal Assistance Programs Mitigate the Effects of Price Shocks," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 170546, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    20. Chul‐Woo Kwon & Peter F. Orazem & Daniel M. Otto, 2006. "Off‐farm labor supply responses to permanent and transitory farm income," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 34(1), pages 59-67, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jorssa:v:177:y:2014:i:1:p:281-294. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rssssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.