Is There a Link between Foreclosure and Health?

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between foreclosures and hospital visits using data on all foreclosures and all hospital and emergency room visits from four states that were among the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. We find that living in a neighborhood with a spike in foreclosures is associated with significant increases in urgent unscheduled visits, including increases in visits for preventable conditions. The estimated relationships cannot be accounted for by increasing unemployment, declines in housing prices, migration, or by people switching from out-patient providers to hospitals.

The impact of changing economic conditions on overweight risk among children in California from 2008 to 2012

“…County-level annual foreclosure rates (2008–2012) were obtained from RealtyTrac whose data cover more than 90% of the USA 25. Three-year estimates (2005–2007) of county-level median household income were obtained from the American Community Survey (ACS), which were used as an indicator of baseline income.…”

“…We examine aggregate, county-level indicators because they capture broad changes in the macroeconomy, which affect everyone and not just individuals who became unemployed or were foreclosed on 4 10 13 25 26. It is also plausible that becoming unemployed is confounded with individual-level characteristics that may also affect health 9 13.…”

“…Therefore, the main independent variables included annual county-level unemployment and foreclosure rates (2008–2012), which have previously been associated with adult weight status 5–9. Unemployment is the most widely used indicator of macroeconomic conditions;5–9 13 27 however, during the recession, foreclosures also represented a significant shock to household's and community's financial well-being 25. The recession, indicated by a decline in several metrics of economic activity (eg, real income, employment, retail sales), ended in June 2009 when macroeconomic indicators began to increase (ie, not when economic activity returned to prerecession levels) 12.…”

The Impact of Housing Prices on Health in U.S. Before, During and After the Great Recession

“…Fiuzat et al (2010) show that there is a significant correlation between periods of stock market crashes and growth in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) rates. Currie and Tekin (2015) use data on all foreclosures and all hospital and emergency room visits from the four states (Arizona, California, Florida, and New Jersey) that suffered the most from the foreclosure crisis in 2010 and find that a sharp increase in foreclosures is associated with a significant increase in emergency visits for mental health problems, heart disease, and stroke.…”

Can Walmart make us healthier? Prescription drug prices and health care utilization

“…A number of conditions used in the literature (see Currie and Tekin, 2015;Billings and Teicholz, 1990;Weissman et al, 1992; among others) can be used as control conditions or falsification tests since they should not be immediately affected by increased adherence to a pharmaceutical treatment. The conditions I use are cancer, appendicitis and gastrointestinal obstruction 36 .…”