Coping with the Cold : Space Heating and the Urban Poor in Developing Countries

While providing affordable warmth to the urban poor is among the main challenges facing many developing countries, so far there has been no empirical work on the demand for space heating for the urban poor in developing countries. One explanation for this gap in the literature is that the urban poor often use a mix of fuels and it is virtually impossible to separate this mix into end uses such as heating, cooking, and lighting. This paper exploits a natural experiment in household survey data collected in three countries — Armenia, Moldova, and Kyrgyz Republic — to model household demand for space heating, and then derives policy implications for designing appropriate heating strategies to provide affordable warmth to the urban poor