Is Housing a Health Insult?

Emma Baker, Andrew Beer, Laurence Lester, David Pevalin, Christine Whitehead and Rebecca Bentley
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Emma Baker: School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005, Australia
Andrew Beer: University of South Australia Business School, Adelaide 5000, Australia
Laurence Lester: School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005, Australia
David Pevalin: School of Health and Human Sciences, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK
Christine Whitehead: Department of Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, UK
Rebecca Bentley: Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia

IJERPH, 2017, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-18

Abstract: In seeking to understand the relationship between housing and health, research attention is often focussed on separate components of people’s whole housing ‘bundles’. We propose in this paper that such conceptual and methodological abstraction of elements of the housing and health relationship limits our ability to understand the scale of the accumulated effect of housing on health and thereby contributes to the under-recognition of adequate housing as a social policy tool and powerful health intervention. In this paper, we propose and describe an index to capture the means by which housing bundles influence health. We conceptualise the index as reflecting accumulated housing ‘insults to health’—an Index of Housing Insults (IHI). We apply the index to a sample of 1000 low-income households in Australia. The analysis shows a graded association between housing insults and health on all outcome measures. Further, after controlling for possible confounders, the IHI is shown to provide additional predictive power to the explanation of levels of mental health, general health and clinical depression beyond more traditional proxy measures. Overall, this paper reinforces the need to look not just at separate housing components but to embrace a broader understanding of the relationship between housing and health.

Keywords: housing; health; index; longitudinal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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