Does co-living improve the physical and mental health of residents?

Jeongseob Kim and Gi-Hyoug Cho

ERES from European Real Estate Society (ERES)

Abstract: Co-living or shared housing has become popular as an emerging housing option for young adults in many countries. Co-living allows residents to save rent by sharing common spaces such as a kitchen and living room in their home. In addition, co-living could provide a new opportunity for social relationship with housemates. Personal privacy is not fully ensured in shared housing so that social conflicts can occur among residents. However, co-living could improve the health of residents through social interactions with housemates. In this regard, this study examines whether co-living can improve physical and mental health of residents. This study explores the relationship between co-living and the health of residents based on the survey with a sample of 830 young adults in Seoul, South Korea. We compared the mental and physical health of house-shares with those of residents in general housing. There is no difference in the physical health between house-sharers and general people, but the mental health of house-sharers, specifically for the depression, is better than that of general people. The results imply that co-living could have the potential to improve the mental health of residents by providing the social relationship with housemates. The findings of this study could be a basis for developing an effective housing policy and planning for young adults.

Keywords: co-living; mental health; physical health; shared housing; Young Adults (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://eres.architexturez.net/doc/oai-eres-id-eres2019-135 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arz:wpaper:eres2019_135

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ERES from European Real Estate Society (ERES) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Architexturez Imprints ().