Energy poverty

[Fantozzi 4,067]

A new study in germany caused a discussion how 'poverty' can be defined exactly. This study determines that 15,7 % of germany's poplation is threatened by poverty. 330.000 homes were without electric power last year because they couldn't afford it.  44.000 also without gas. 6,2 million homes were threatened by a temporarily cutout of electric power because they had troubles to pay the bill. 

But can energy be a measure for poverty?

Link only in german, sorry.

[twalsh102 1,601]

I followed your link and, using Bing Translate, found that this is a newspaper article apparently about a report done by a charity organization that apparently used statistics cherry-picked from official government figures (whose validity themselves are being questioned).  Is there possibly an agenda here, i.e. "We as charity organizations need to continue to exist, and you need to continue to give us your hard-earned money, so that we can help alleviate this crisis (that exists, of course, because all these numbers tell us so).'  The article reports much criticism of this report.  NOTE:  I found no mention of the word "study" in this article.  But this could be a function of mistranslation.

I think it's probably impossible to give any sort of educated answer to your question based solely on the article.  There is just too much context missing.  Without access to both the full contents of the report and the actual study, there is no way to even try to determine the validity of any of the conclusions drawn in the report (unless one belongs to that group of people that believes absolutely everything reported in the news, or that exists on the Internet, has to be true - 'They wouldn't lie to use, would they?")

Statistics, especially those quoted without any context, can be massaged to have any meaning one wants to apply to them.  For the 15.7% number, how was this derived?, What does it actually mean?  Being "threatened by poverty," having an income below some predetermined poverty threshold, and actually being "poverty-stricken" are totally different things!  For the 330,000 number, does this mean that that number of homes was permanently without electricity, or only had electricity shut off temporarily for some period of time?  Same with gas?  If the latter (electricity shut off for some period of time), how long was the average outage?  Of those that had electricity shut off, did the quoted statistics take into account the differentiation between not being able to afford paying a bill vs. just not paying on time (there is no guarantee that not paying on time equates to not being able to afford to do so?  (For those of us that don't live in Germany) If electricity was shut off, does this imply that all supplied utilities were shut off (gas, water, sewage, trash removal, etc.) as well?  All things being relative, was there any differentiation made between those who couldn't pay their electricity bill for a 32-room mansion, vs. not being able to pay the electricity bill for a 3-room cottage?  If electricity was shut off temporarily because of lack of money to pay the bill, was the reason general lack of income, or was it due to some other temporary, unexpected (and more important) expense?

I like the question that was asked about "6,2 million homes were threatened by a temporarily cutout of electric power because they had troubles to pay the bill."  'How many of these actually had their electricity shut off?'  Is this the 330,000 number??

Many utility companies here in the US offer programs for people that find themselves monetarily-challenged from time to time.  Do such programs exist in Germany (provided by the utility companies)?

At the very least, with no other supplied context, your question would have to be both geographically-, and situationally-dependent.  Think some native tribe that lives in the jungles or plains of sub-Saharan Africa, or in the jungles of the Amazon Basin, or on some remote Pacific Island.  By all traditional definitions of poverty, they would probably be considered extremely poverty-stricken.  But in fact, they are able to meet all their basic needs, and not only continue to survive, but continue to thrive just as they probably have for thousands of years.