Housing difficulties, health status and life satisfaction

Mingzhi Hu; Yinxin Su; Xiaofen Yu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1024875

Housing difficulties, health status and life satisfaction

Front Psychol. 2022 Dec 21:13:1024875. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1024875. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Mingzhi Hu¹, Yinxin Su², Xiaofen Yu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Engineering Management, School of Management, Chinese Academy of Housing and Real Estate, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
² Department of Urban Development and Management, College of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.

Abstract

This study examines the effects of housing difficulties on life satisfaction. By using longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies survey, we find strong evidence that households who experience housing difficulties are less satisfied with their lives than those who do not after controlling for a wide range of household demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and county and year fixed effects. Our estimated results are robust to unobservable household characteristics, model misspecification and selection bias. We also provide explanations for the negative effects of housing difficulties on life satisfaction through which housing difficulties are detrimental to physical and psychological health. Life satisfaction remains negatively associated with housing difficulties even after controlling for health status.

Keywords: housing difficulties; life satisfaction; mechanisms; physical health; psychological health.