Impact of Housing and Community Conditions on Multidimensional Health among Middle- and Low-Income Groups in Hong Kong

Jionghua Wang, Bo Huang, Ting Zhang, Hung Wong and Yifan Huang
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Jionghua Wang: Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Bo Huang: Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Ting Zhang: Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Hung Wong: Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Yifan Huang: Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-14

Abstract: With decades of urbanization, housing and community problems (e.g., poor ventilation and lack of open public spaces) have become important social determinants of health that require increasing attention worldwide. Knowledge regarding the link between health and these problems can provide crucial evidence for building healthy communities. However, this link has heretofore not been identified in Hong Kong, and few studies have compared the health impact of housing and community conditions across different income groups. To overcome this gap, we hypothesize that the health impact of housing and community problems may vary across income groups and across health dimensions. We tested these hypotheses using cross-sectional survey data from Hong Kong. Several health outcomes, e.g., chronic diseases and the SF-12 v. 2 mental component summary scores, were correlated with a few types of housing and community problems, while other outcomes, such as the DASS-21–Stress scores, were sensitive to a broader range of problems. The middle- and low-income group was more severely affected by poor built environments. These results can be used to identify significant problems in the local built environment, especially amongst the middle- and low-income group.

Keywords: housing conditions; community conditions; health outcomes; lasso; Hong Kong (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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