How Does Energy Poverty Affect Family Happiness in China? An Analysis Based on the China Family Panel Studies

Energy poverty, as an emerging form of poverty, is key to consolidating the achievements of poverty alleviation and is also an important cornerstone for promoting energy transformation, social equity, and people’s well-being. Based on data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) for 2018 to 2022, we use the head of household’s subjective happiness to proxy for family happiness. Using a two-way fixed-effects model, we analyze the impact of energy poverty on family happiness and its mechanism from the theoretical and empirical aspects. The conclusions are as follows: (1) Energy poverty has a significant negative impact on family happiness, and the estimated results of instrumental variables after solving endogeneity are consistent. (2) Heterogeneity analysis finds that for families with relatively advantaged economic conditions, such as non-relatively poor families, urban families, and families with no loans, energy poverty significantly reduces their happiness, which contradicts our conventional understanding. (3) Mechanism analysis shows that energy poverty affects income gaps, health status, and economic status, which in turn affect family happiness. The respective percentages coming from the mechanisms of income gap, health status, and economic status are 43.31%, 26.11%, and 9.55%. We directly link energy sustainability, a core area of sustainable development, with residents’ well-being. It fills the systematic research gap on how energy poverty affects household happiness and deepens our understanding of its underlying transmission mechanism. Furthermore, it enriches research on the implementation pathways of energy policy and common prosperity, broadens the boundaries of research in energy economy and social welfare, and provides important practical implications for advancing energy inclusion and rural revitalization within the sustainable development framework.