Abstract: Energy poverty is an important manifestation of multidimensional poverty, and alleviating energy poverty is of great significance in promoting social equity and realizing common prosperity for all people. It is worth conducting in-depth research on how targeted poverty alleviation policy can have an impact on alleviating household energy poverty. Taking the implementation of the targeted poverty alleviation policies as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper conducts an empirical study that constructs a multidimensional energy poverty index using the micro-level household data. The findings show that the targeted poverty alleviation policies have significantly reduced the incidence of household energy poverty. The mechanism analysis indicates that this policy has effectively alleviated household energy poverty through relief-based and self-sustaining poverty alleviation, proving the effectiveness of various measures such as transfer payments, social security guarantees, and employment-based poverty alleviation after the implementation of the targeted poverty alleviation policies. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the targeted poverty alleviation policy has a more pronounced alleviating effect on energy poverty in households with a higher proportion of women, but the policy effect is relatively limited in households with heavier dependency burdens, unhealthy individuals, and lower educational levels, indicating that the release of poverty alleviation dividends does not benefit all households evenly. The reason is that the insufficient human capital of vulnerable households limits the employment assistance effect of poverty alleviation policies. Therefore, in the post-poverty alleviation era, the government should more precisely adjust the targets of assistance and policy tools, promote the continuous improvement of low-income groups' income-generating abilities, and take multiple measures to alleviate household energy poverty.

Key words: targeted poverty alleviation policy, household energy poverty, relief-oriented poverty alleviation, hematopoiesis-oriented poverty alleviation