Abstract
Research investigating the link between housing and health often produces mixed results. It does not always prove that good housing improves health. The results suggest a complex set of factors play a role, and the findings are sometimes contradictory. Two ways of addressing these concerns are longitudinal research, where the relationship between housing and health is measured in the short and medium terms, and a focus on children. We use the children’s housing and health data from the five waves of the National Income and Distribution Survey (NIDS) survey in South Africa, 2008 to 2017. We investigate the effect that continued living in informal housing over the five waves has had on these children’s health. Our results show a statistically significant relationship between prolonged residence in poor housing and poor health outcomes for some health indicators. The results call for a closer understanding of health issues in housing policy in South Africa.
Highlights
The relationship between housing and health is not always clearly shown by research.We assume that good living conditions are good for health
We considered that living in an informal dwelling for four of the five waves constituted continued experience of poor housing
Given that informal houses are associated with poor health, policymakers could look at improvements in housing to deal with public health concerns
Summary
The relationship between housing and health is not always clearly shown by research.We assume that good living conditions are good for health. The relationship between housing and health is not always clearly shown by research. Several studies have looked at the relationship between housing and health [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. We argue that longitudinal work is the method most likely to clarify the relationship between housing and health and that more of this kind of work should be performed. We used longitudinal data from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), the first national household panel study in South Africa. The Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town implemented the first five waves of NIDS, in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2017. We used Stata Version 14 (StataCorp, College Station, TX, USA) for analysis.
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