Housing tenure and car access: further exploration of the nature of their relations with health in a UK setting
- S Macintyrea,
- R Hiscockb,
- A Kearnsc,
- A Ellawaya
- aMRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, 4 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, Scotland, bSchool of Geography and Geosciences, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, cDepartment of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow, Glasgow
- Professor Macintyre (Sally{at}msoc.mrc.gla.ac.uk)
- Accepted 14 January 2001
Housing tenure and car access predict longevity and health in many European countries. It is usually assumed that they do so only because they are markers of other material determinants of health. However, in a previous paper we showed that both variables were still significantly associated with several health outcomes after controls for age, sex, and income.1 Here we replicate and extend that analysis in another sample, examining whether observed relations between tenure or car access and health remain after controlling for alternative measures of material assets (social class and income), and, following suggestions that socioeconomic gradients in health may differ between men and women,2 whether there are interactions with gender.
Methods
A postal questionnaire, with three follow ups, achieved a response rate of 50% (42% male, 58% female), from a random sample of 6500 adults from the electoral roll in eight local authority areas in the west of Scotland in 1997. We examined four domains of self assessed health: chronic, recent and mental …
