Climbing the Energy Ladder: Household Heating Fuel Choice in Jordan

<title>Abstract</title> <p>This study examines the socioeconomic and geographic determinants of household heating fuel choice in Jordan, using a nationally representative sample of 18,434 households from the 2023 Demographic and Health Survey. Household fuel is classified into a three-tier energy-ladder hierarchy (traditional, transitional, and modern) and modeled using a partial proportional-odds specification that tests, rather than assumes, the proportional-odds assumption at each predictor level. The results reveal two structurally distinct transitions: an escape from traditional fuel, strongly governed by household wealth, rurality, and geography, and a further move into modern fuel, which depends more on local infrastructure and supply availability than on household income. Geography produces the largest effects; the northern highland governorates of Ajloun, Jarash, and Mafraq show dramatic entrenchment in biomass-based fuel use, while Aqaba exhibits a nearly fivefold advantage in cleaner fuel use relative to Amman. The wealth gradient is asymmetric, concentrated at the first transition, implying that income-targeted subsidies are effective at moving households off solid fuel but comparatively weak at further transitions to modern energy. Jordan’s LPG-cylinder distribution system emerges as a notably inclusive instrument, reaching even informal and non-permanent dwellings. The findings point to three policy priorities: geographic targeting of energy-access interventions in governorates experiencing entrenchment, infrastructure investment to support the second energy transition, and targeted attention to the transitional-fuel lock-in observed in Zarqa. Testing proportional odds explicitly, rather than imposing a uniform energy ladder, constitutes the paper’s principal methodological contribution.</p>