School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester, UK.
Department of Economics, University of Bath, UK.
Econ Hum Biol. 2020 Dec;39:100903. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100903. Epub 2020 Jul 3.
Home ownership is an important component of wealth and may affect health through a range of mechanisms. Using macro- and micro-level data from 2000 to 2008, we seek to estimate the causal effect of home ownership on health by exploiting the Right to Buy policy, which encouraged long-term tenants of publicly rented housing to buy their home at a large discount. At the macro-level we find that a 10 percentage-point increase in home ownership rates is associated with a 2 percentage-point reduction in the number of people reporting having a longstanding health condition. At the individual level we find that home ownership increases the General Health Questionnaire score by 1.46 points on a 37-point scale and self-assessed health by 0.19 points on a 5-point scale and reduces the number of health conditions reported by 0.65. Further analyses show that home ownership affects health via labour markets, with new job opportunities, extra time saved travelling and resources available for healthy leisure activities. These results suggest that housing policies, such as affordable housing, can be an example of non-health policies that improve health.
住房拥有率是财富的一个重要组成部分，它可能通过一系列机制影响健康。我们利用 2000 年至 2008 年的宏观和微观数据，通过鼓励长期租用公屋的租户以大幅折扣购买住房的购房权政策，试图估算住房拥有率对健康的因果影响。在宏观层面上，我们发现住房拥有率每增加 10 个百分点，报告长期存在健康问题的人数就会减少 2 个百分点。在个人层面上，我们发现住房拥有率使一般健康调查问卷的得分增加了 1.46 分（满分 37 分），自评健康状况增加了 0.19 分（满分 5 分），并减少了报告的健康问题数量 0.65 个。进一步的分析表明，住房拥有率通过劳动力市场影响健康，新的就业机会、节省的旅行时间和可用于健康休闲活动的资源。这些结果表明，住房政策（如经济适用房）可以成为改善健康的非健康政策的一个例子。
