RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The association between housing cost burden and avoidable mortality in wealthy countries: cross-national analysis of social and housing policies, 2000-2017
JF Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
JO J Epidemiol Community Health
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
SP 65
OP 73
DO 10.1136/jech-2022-219545
VO 77
IS 2
A1 Gum-Ryeong Park
A1 Michel Grignon
A1 Marisa Young
A1 James R Dunn
YR 2023
UL http://jech.bmj.com/content/77/2/65.abstract
AB Background It has been shown that the high cost of housing can be detrimental to individual health. However, it is unknown (1) whether high housing costs pose a threat to population health and (2) whether and how social policies moderate the link between housing cost burden and mortality. This study aims to reduce these knowledge gaps.Methods Country-level panel data from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries are used. Housing cost to income ratio and age-standardised mortality were obtained from the OECD database. Fixed effects models were conducted to estimate the extent to which the housing cost to income ratio was associated with preventable mortality, treatable mortality, and suicides. In order to assess the moderating effects of social and housing policies, different types of social spending per capita as well as housing policies were taken into account.Results Housing cost to income ratio was significantly associated with preventable mortality, treatable mortality, and suicide during the post-global financial crisis (2009–2017) but not during the pre-global financial crisis (2000–2008). Social spending on pensions and unemployment benefits decreased the levels of mortality rate associated with housing cost burden. In countries with higher levels of social housing stock, the link between housing cost burden and mortality was attenuated. Similar patterns were examined for countries with rent control.Conclusion Our findings suggest that housing cost burden can be related to population health. Future studies should examine the role of protective measures that alleviate health problems caused by housing cost burden.Data are available in a public, open access repository. We used secondary data from the OECD databases. Research ethics approval was therefore carried out by the OECD. The information for data source are as follows: - OECD. Health Status. 2022. Data from: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_MORTALITY-OECD. Household spending (indicator). 2021. Data from: 10.1787/b5f46047-en - OECD. Social Expenditure: Aggregated data. 2022. Data from: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?datasetcode=SOCX_AGG-OECD. OECD Affordable Housing Database. 2022. Data from: https://www.oecd.org/housing/data/affordable-housing-database/