Indonesia's population aged 60 years and over has doubled in the last two decades. Older adults will reach 19.9 percent in 2045, meaning almost one-fifth of Indonesia's population are elderly. Data Susenas 2021 showed that older people dominate the use of firewood and charcoal for cooking at about 18.72 percent, while the non-elderly population is only 10.29 percent. Using traditional cooking fuels like firewood and charcoal indicates energy poverty deprivation. Several studies have been conducted to investigate energy poor in older people and its impact on health, cognitive and mental health, and well-being with household unit analysis. Studies on the effect of multidimensional energy poverty (MEP) on older people's health with individuals are limited and have never been held in Indonesia. This study aims to measure MEP at the individual level of older people in Indonesia and then investigate its impact on their health status. This study uses the historical distance from each regency where the older people lived to the nearest power plant in 1985 as an instrumental variable to overcome the endogeneity problem. The Data processing results of Susenas from 2019 to 2021 found that the number of older people in Indonesia who experience multidimensional energy poverty (MEP) is still very high. There is 72,05 percent of older people who experience energy poverty in 2021. The result of OLS regression is that MEP significantly negatively correlates with older people's health. The coefficient from the two-stage least square estimation result, including all control variables, is -0.3964. At the mean level of the control group, multidimensional energy poverty reduces the health status of older people by 67,19 percent. This study further conducted western-eastern regional and urban-rural comparative analyses. The findings demonstrate that the health of older people in the eastern region is more severely affected, and multidimensional energy poverty deteriorates the health status of rural older people.
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Keywords: electricity infrastructure, energy poverty, energy geography, archipelagic country, panel data
JEL Classification: D62, Q41, R12
"Kemiskinan energi merupakan masalah bagi negara maju dan berkembang. Oleh karena itu, menyelidiki kondisi kemiskinan energi menjadi keniscayaan bagi setiap negara, mengingat akses energi memiliki peranan yang cukup penting dalam pembangunan sumber daya manusia dan pertumbuhan ekonomi. Namun, terjadi pandemi COVID-19 yang berdampak buruk bagi pertumbuhan ekonomi, meningkatnya jumlah pengangguran, yang pada gilirannya akan meningkatkan jumlah orang yang terpapar kemiskinan. Sehingga muncul dugaan bahwa pandemi COVID-19 juga memperburuk kondisi kemiskinan energi pada level rumah tangga. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melihat dampak pandemi COVID-19 beserta variabel-variabel determinan kemiskinan energi, yaitu tingkat pengeluaran, wilayah tempat tinggal, jenis kelamin dan tingkat pendidikan terhadap kemiskinan energi multidimensi. Adapun pengukuran kemiskinan energi menggunakan Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) yang didasarkan pada data sekunder dari Survei Sosial Ekonomi Nasional di tahun 2014, 2019, 2021 dan 2022. Tujuan lain penelitian ini ialah melihat dan membandingkan kondisi kemiskinan energi antar rezim pemerintahan, berdasarkan kelompok pengeluaran dan wilayah tempat tinggal. Hasil analisis regresi linear berganda menunjukkan bahwa pandemi COVID-19 memperburuk kondisi kemiskinan energi multidimensi. Semua kelompok pengeluaran dan tingkat pendidikan memiliki pengaruh negatif dan signifikan. Sedangkan tempat tinggal dan jenis kelamin memiliki pengaruf positif dan signifikan.