Cold homes and mental health harm
Evidence from the UK Household Longitudinal Study
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4601900 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andree Clair (0000-0001-5739-183X, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, corresponding author), Emma Baker (0000-0002-9390-0491, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 314 |
| Pages | 115461 |
| Publication date | 2022-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Science & Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0277-9536 • E-ISSN: 1873-5347 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115461 |
| PMID | 36327633 |
| OpenAlex | W4307038683 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 23 |
| References cited | 40 |
Cold homes are associated with a range of serious health conditions as well as excess winter mortality. Despite a comparatively mild climate cold homes are a significant problem in the UK, with a recent estimate finding that over one-quarter of low-income households had been unable to adequately heat their home in winter 2022. The magnitude of cold housing in a country that benefits from a mild climate indicates indifference towards, or acceptance of, a significant minority of people living in inadequate conditions on the part of policy makers. Cold homes are therefore a source of social harm. Recent changes to the household energy price cap, the rising cost of living, the ongoing effects of the benefit cap, and below inflation uprating to social security benefits is likely to greatly exacerbate this issue. In this research we use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study to explore whether living in a cold home causes mental health harm. We control for mental distress and housing temperature on entry to the survey in order to account for the potentially bi-directional relationship. Multilevel discrete-time event history models show that the transition into living in a home that is not suitably warm is associated with nearly double the odds of experiencing severe mental distress for those who had no mental distress at the beginning of the survey; and over three times the odds of severe mental distress for those previously on the borderline of severe mental distress. These results show the significant costs of failing to ensure that people are able to live in homes in which they are able to live comfortably by even the most basic standards. These costs will be felt not just individually, but also more broadly in terms of increased health spending and reduced working
Demographic economics · Distress · Economics · Environmental health · Geography · Harm · Logistic regression · Mental distress · Mental health · Odds · Psychiatry · Psychological intervention · Quarter (Canadian coin · Climate Change and Health Impacts · Global Health Care Issues · Health disparities and outcomes · Medicine · Psychology · Social Psychology
Methodological approaches to measuring mental health in a cost-of-living crisis
Association between urban climate physical risk and depressive symptoms in middle-aged and older adults
Housing tenure and disability in the UK
Projected costs of long-term care for older people in England
Rising natural gas and electricity prices
Opportunities and challenges in community-led action on weather extremes for health and wellbeing
Latent profiles of death anxiety among young adults
Assessing retrofit policies for fuel-poor homes in London
Energy poverty and well-being at the local level
(Dis)comfortably numb in energy transitions
Living on the edge
New ways of measuring energy poverty
Unpacking the mental health effects of energy poverty – implications of energy poverty metric choice for research and policy
Early onset of care needs in the older population
They’re Making the Rich Richer and the Poor Poorer”
A Qualitative Evaluation of the Warm Banks Scheme as a Response to the Cost‐of‐Living Crisis in North East England
Long-term Care Needs and Fuel Poverty among Older People
Measuring the use of energy poverty coping strategies and the heat‐or‐eat trade‐off in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia
For a political economy of housing and health
Money anxiety
Housing Policy and Reproductive Justice in the UK
Qualitative findings from the “Healthy Residents” study
The total health gains and cost savings of eradicating cold housing in Australia
From ‘crime’ to social harm?
Policy options for the split incentive
Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature
Association between psychological distress and mortality
The Inverse Care Law
It’s changed my life not to have the continual worry of being warm” – health and wellbeing impacts of a local fuel poverty programme
Housing and Mental Health
Documenting fuel poverty from the householders’ perspective
Getting the measure of fuel poverty’
Ontological Security and Psycho-Social Benefits from the Home
Keeping warm and staying well
Beyond Four Walls'. The Psycho-social Benefits of Home
Understanding the Psychosocial Impacts of Housing Type
Cold housing
New evidence on mental health and housing affordability in cities
Housing and health
The “inverse housing law” and respiratory health
Excess winter mortality in Europe
Locked down
Home Is Where the Harm Is
Home is where the hearth is
Beyond debt. A moderator analysis of the relationship between perceived financial strain and mental health
Harmful Societies
Minimising Misery
| Unique citing works | 23 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 7,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 22 |