Examining Housing Environments and Health Status of Older Adults with Physical Disabilities in South Korea

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the relationships between housing environments and health and well-being among older adults with physical disabilities in South Korea. Data are from the 2014 National Survey on Persons with Disabilities. We modelled four health and well-being outcomes – perceived stress, depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, and life satisfaction – by various housing environments among 2,077 older adults with physical disabilities. The results illustrate that home ownership and perceived house accessibility are associated with health and well-being. Findings indicate that efforts to promote the health of older adults with physical disabilities need to be accompanied by improvements in their housing environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Older adults with physical disabilities
• housing environment
• home ownership
• quality of housing environment
• health status

Acknowledgments

This paper was supported by the International Research Funds for Humanities and Social Science of Jeonbuk National University in 2016 and by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant by Korean Government (NRF-2016S1A3A2924706).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethics approval

This article does not contain human participants performed by any of the authors. This study passed the exempt review at the University Institutional Review Board.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was supported by the International Research Funds for Humanities and Social Science of Jeonbuk National University in 2016 and by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant by Korean Government (NRF-2016S1A3A2924706).