The impact on your health of renting an apartment compared to owning one is nearly double that of being out of work versus having paid employment. Fortunately, these effects are reversible if you manage to buy a place to live, said British researchers who stress the importance of housing policy in health improvement.
With interest rates skyrocketing and home prices much higher than in most countries, Israelis – especially young couples eager to buy a first apartment but stuck in growingly expensive rental flats – feel desperate.
Numerous aspects of housing are linked with physical and mental health, including cold, mold, crowding, injury hazards, stress, and stigma. But exactly how they might exert their effects isn’t entirely clear, say the researchers. To explore this further, they drew on epigenetic information alongside social survey data and signs of biological ageing, captured through evidence of DNA methylation in blood samples. Epigenetics describes how behaviors and environmental factors can cause changes that alter the way genes work, while DNA methylation is a chemical modification of DNA that can alter gene expression.
They used data from the representative UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) and survey responses from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). The findings were published in the BMJ’s Journal of Epidemiology under the title “Are housing circumstances associated with faster epigenetic aging?”
They collected the information available in the UKHLS on material elements of housing – tenure; building type; government financial support available to renters; presence of central heating as a proxy for adequate warmth; location in an urban or rural area. Psychosocial elements included housing costs, payment arrears, overcrowding, and moving expectations and preferences.
Researchers controlled for confounding variables
Additional health information was subsequently collected from the 1420 BHPS survey respondents, and blood samples taken for DNA methylation analysis. When studying all the data, the researchers accounted for potentially influential factors including gender, nationality, education level, socioeconomic status, diet, cumulative stress, financial hardship, urban environments; weight, and smoking.
The analysis showed that living in a privately rented home was associated with faster biological aging. In addition, the impact of renting in the private sector, as opposed to outright ownership (with no mortgage), was almost double that of being out of work rather than being employed. It was also 50% greater than having been a former smoker as opposed to never having smoked.
Living in public housing subsidized by the authorities – with its lower cost and greater security of tenure – was no different than outright ownership in terms of its association with biological ageing once additional housing variables were included.
“Our results suggest that challenging housing circumstances negatively affect health through faster biological ageing. However, biological ageing is reversible, highlighting the significant potential for housing policy changes to improve health.” They suggested that their findings are likely to be relevant to housing and health elsewhere, particularly to countries with similar housing policies.
“What it means to be a private renter is not set in stone but dependent on policy decisions, which to date have prioritized owners and investors over renters,” they added. “Policies to reduce the stress and uncertainty associated with private renting, such as ending ‘no-fault’ evictions, limiting rent increases, and improving conditions may go some way to reducing the negative impacts of private renting,” they concluded.