How Housing Conditions Affect Health: Findings From the Turkish National Household Panel Survey

Abstract

Housing is an important expression of prosperity for a society and a determinant of health and well-being. Despite the fact that the housing industry, which has faced rapid transformation and growth in Turkey since the 2000s, has made many people homeowners, being a homeowner alone does not ensure the subjective well-being of individuals. The conditions of individuals’ houses are also significant for their well-being. Accordingly, the Survey on Income and Living Conditions covering the years 2014–2017 was used to determine whether inequalities in housing conditions are linked to health problems among households. An index that measures the housing conditions of 5,549 households was devised and its effects on self-rated health, along with other socioeconomic indicators, were examined using a random-effects ordered logistic model. The findings indicate that the quality of housing enhances self-rated health in Turkey. More specifically, improved housing conditions tend to increase the likelihood of individuals being healthier. As the results show that inequality in housing conditions has a significant effect on general health, alongside education, gender, and marital status, housing policies should not only focus on the affordability of housing but should also take social welfare indicators into account.

Keywords:

• housing quality
• self-rated health
• household panel data

Disclosure statement

The panel data set of this research is provided by the Turkish Statistical Institute. The authors thank to Turkish Statistical Institute for granting permissions to use the Income and Living Conditions Survey. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article. The authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial or non financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Işıl Şirin Selçuk

Işıl Şirin Selçuk majored in economics at Gazi University in 2006 and in 2009 received an MSc degree from Ankara University where she received a PhD degree in Department of Economics in 2015. Her doctoral thesis which is titled as “Three Essays on Energy Market Transformations and Regulations” received a PhD encouragement prize from Turkish Economics Association. Since 2015 she has been working  at the Department of Economics at Abant Izzet Baysal University. Her research interests include household economics, energy and environmental economics as well as applications of those topics.

Egemen İpek

Egemen İpek is an associate professor at the Tarsus University, Mersin,Turkey. He received his PhD in economics from Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey. He was a Visiting PhD student at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in 2013-2014. He was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics and Finance at Brunel University in 2018-2019. His research area includes household economics, health economics, and applied microeconometrics.

Altuğ Murat Köktaş

Altug Murat Köktas completed his doctoral studies at Ankara University, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Public Finance. He started to work as an associate professor at Nigde Ömer Halisdemir University and is currently the Head of the Department of Finance at the Faculty of Political Sciences at Necmettin Erbakan University.