The effect of cooking fuel choice on the elderly’s well-being: Evidence from two non-parametric methods

We examine the relationship between the usage of household clean cooking fuels in rural areas and elderly's overall well-being using micro survey data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). We make two key innovations to the literature. First, we use Double Machine Learning, a newly proposed non-parametric method as a consistent estimation of causal inference, to capture non-linear effects of clean energy usage on the elderly's well-being using a large number of confounders. Second, we take multiple views to assess elderly's overall well-being, including physical health, psychological health and life satisfaction. We find usage of clean cooking fuel in rural areas significantly enhances middle-aged and senior people's physical and mental health status and improves their overall subjective life satisfaction. Overall, our results support the energy transition to the use of clean fuels for cooking in rural areas of China, particularly for the elderly population.