Health, housing tenure, and entrapment 2001-2011: Does changing tenure and address improve health?

Political and policy debates about social-rented housing focus on low spatial mobility and reduced chances of upward social mobility. Academics have also considered the concepts of housing entrapment and selective placement (Smith & Easterlow, 2005). There is also wider academic literature on the inter-relationships between: housing tenure, health, and wider dimensions of social wellbeing, and the measurement of these at both the individual and area level.  This proposal seeks to contribute to this research area by explicitly exploring the relationships between changing health and housing tenure status, and also spatial mobility in Northern Ireland, 2001-2011. A particular focus will be on the extent to which different tenure trajectories (e.g. movements from social rented to owner occupied housing) are associated with changes in health status, and how these are linked to different kinds of spatial move between different types of place.

The initial stage of the analysis will describe different kinds of transition in the NILS (e.g. changes in individuals’ limiting long-term illness and general health, 2001-2011) looking for patterns and trends. Following this, multilevel analysis will be undertaken to determine the individual and areal-level factors associated with changing housing tenure and health status.  For the technical purposes of the Beta test, the project will test change in residence and a restricted selection of other key variables such as housing tenure, health, gender, age, social economic status (SES), education, and community background, 2001-2011.

Outputs:

Gould, M. & Shuttleworth, I (2014) ‘Health, housing tenure & entrapment 2001-2011: Does changing tenure and address improve health?‘ – presented at British Society for Population Studies, Winchester, 10th September 2014