Elsevier

Economics & Human Biology

Volume 39, December 2020, 100903
Economics & Human Biology

Is owning your home good for your health? Evidence from exogenous variations in subsidies in England

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100903Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • The decision to own your home can affect your health and well-being.

  • Little is known about this causal relationship or possible explanations.

  • We provide evidence at area and individual level that home ownership is goods for health.

  • Possible explanations are better labour market outcomes and healthier lifestyles.

Abstract

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.

JEL classification

H70
I10
I31
I38

Keywords

Home ownership
Health and well-being
Right to Buy
Housing policies

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