Assessing demographic vulnerability and weather impacts on utility disconnections in California.

ABSTRACT: When a household is disconnected from their electric utility service the consequences can be severe, including accumulation of debt, the inability to maintain comfortable temperatures, and in the most extreme cases, homelessness or mortality. While the survey-based literature on utility disconnections has yielded important findings about which households are most likely to experience a utility shutoff, only a few existing studies have used data from utility companies themselves. In this analysis, we utilize zip-code level data from four of California's largest utility providers to measure sociodemographic disparities in disconnections, in addition to the impact of adverse weather. We find that zip codes with a higher share of vulnerable households, especially Black and Hispanic households

SUBMITTER: Memmott T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11538516 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature