Reeves, Aaron, Clair, Amy, McKee, Martin and Stuckler, David (2016) Reductions in the United Kingdom's Government Housing Benefit and symptoms of depression in low-income households. American Journal of Epidemiology, 184 (6). pp. 421-429. ISSN 0002-9262
|
PDF
- Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (230Kb) | Preview |
Abstract
Housing security is an important determinant ofmental ill health.We used a quasinatural experiment to evaluate this association, comparing the prevalence of mental ill health in the United Kingdom before and after the government’s April 2011 reduction in financial support for low-income persons who rent private-sector housing (mean reduction of approximately £1,220 ($2,315) per year).Data came fromtheUnited Kingdom’s Annual Population Survey, a repeated quarterly cross-sectional survey. We focused our analysis on renters in the private sector, disaggregating data between an intervention group receiving the government’s Housing Benefit (n = 36,859) and a control group not receiving the Housing Benefit (n = 142,205). The main outcome was a binary measure of self-reported mental health problems. After controlling for preexisting time trends, we observed that between April 2011 and March 2013, the prevalence of depressive symptoms among private renters receiving the Housing Benefit increased by 1.8 percentage points (95% confidence interval: 1.0, 2.7) compared with those not receiving the Housing Benefit. Our models estimated that approximately 26,000 (95% confidence interval: 14,000, 38,000) people newly experienced depressive symptoms in association with the cuts to the Housing Benefit.We conclude that reducing housing support to low-inc
| Item Type: | Article | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/ | |||||||||
| Additional Information: | © 2016 The Authors © CC BY 4.0 | |||||||||
| Library of Congress subject classification: | H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) > JN101 Great Britain R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine |
|||||||||
| Sets: | Research centres and groups > International Inequalities Institute | |||||||||
| Project and Funder Information: |
|
|||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 14 Sep 2016 09:17 | |||||||||
| URL: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/67723/ |
Actions (login required)
 |
Record administration - authorised staff only |
Download statistics
Download statistics