The Mental Health Effects of Housing Tenure: Causal or Compositional?

Abstract

Housing tenure sits at the heart of much academic and policy literature across many post-industrial countries, and, while debate is often centred on promoting tenure choice, surprisingly little is known of the underlying ways that the tenure chosen can affect health. While population characteristics tend to vary between tenure types, this largely reflects the forces of broader social and economic selection into those tenures. This paper examines what identifiable effect tenure has upon the mental health of individuals, over and above the characteristics of selection. The analysis is based upon 40 828 responses of 10 245 individuals in the Australian working-age population who participated in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia study between 2001 and 2007. It is found that, while mental health varies significantly between tenure types, once tenure population differences are accounted for there is little evidence of an intrinsic relationship between tenure and mental health.Emma Baker is in the

Housing affordability, tenure and mental health in Australia and the United Kingdom: a comparative panel analysis

“…The potential limitations of a ratio measure of housing affordability are well known and widely discussed in this field. We chose to use the 30/40 rule as our indicator of poor housing affordability because of its prominence within the international literature, its widespread acceptance amongst policy makers and the relative quality of underlying data when compared with the alternatives (as discussed in Baker et al, 2013).…”

The spatial pattern of premature mortality in Hong Kong: How does it relate to public housing?

“…Researchers who investigated the relationship between housing and health have primarily focussed on environmental or physical aspects of housing (building conditions, exposure to noise, crowding) (Jacobs 2011;Krieger & Higgins 2002;Dunn & Hayes 2000), the role of housing tenure (Baker et al 2013;Dalstra et al 2006;Hartig & Fransson 2006;Leech 2010) or the relationship between both alongside neighbourhood characteristics Macintyre et al 2003;Ellaway & Macintyre 1998;Windle et al 2006). Except perhaps the investigation by Baker et al (2013), the studies highlight the negative health effects of rented accommodationincluding social housing -vis-a-vis owned properties.…”

“…Except perhaps the investigation by Baker et al (2013), the studies highlight the negative health effects of rented accommodationincluding social housing -vis-a-vis owned properties. Yet, ascertaining a health effect of housing over and above physical and neighbourhood conditions is complicated, since social housing is often of inferior quality compared to private accommodation and is located in deprived and socially disorganised neighbourhoods.…”

“…Such cities have been found to generate advanced forms of inequality and polarised geographies of disadvantage (Corburn 2009, Sassen 2001, Gusmano et al 2010, and hence public housing appears to be a valuable policy tool to address the social determinants of health (Doran et al 2013). But studies investigating connections between housing and community health have been predominantly conducted in Western cities, and while there is some evidence for a protective effect of housing stability on disadvantaged residents (Baker et al 2013;Pollack et al 2012;Burgard et al 2012), results have been mixed overall. In this paper, we seek to bring Hong Kong into the debate by comparing the spatial pattern of health disadvantage -measured as premature mortality risk (PMR) -to the spatial distribution of public housing in the city.…”

Multi-scalar residential context and recovery from illness: An analysis using Swedish register data

“…It is, however, common to argue that individuals are selected into neighbourhoods on the basis of observed and unobserved characteristics (Baker, Bentley and Mason, 2013). This implies that the assignment of individuals to neighbourhoods is non--random and, as a consequence, it becomes difficult to tell if differing outcomes between neighbourhoods are caused by the selection process or by contextual effects.…”