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Reductions in the United Kingdom's Government Housing Benefit and Symptoms of Depression in Low-Income Households

Housing security is an important determinant of mental 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 perso...

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Autores principales: Reeves, Aaron, Clair, Amy, McKee, Martin, Stuckler, David
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5023793/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27613659
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aje/kww055
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author Reeves, Aaron
Clair, Amy
McKee, Martin
Stuckler, David
author_facet Reeves, Aaron
Clair, Amy
McKee, Martin
Stuckler, David
author_sort Reeves, Aaron
collection PubMed
description Housing security is an important determinant of mental 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 from the United 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-income persons in the private rental sector increased the prevalence of depressive symptoms in the United Kingdom.
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spelling pubmed-50237932016-09-20 Reductions in the United Kingdom's Government Housing Benefit and Symptoms of Depression in Low-Income Households Reeves, Aaron Clair, Amy McKee, Martin Stuckler, David Am J Epidemiol Original Contributions Housing security is an important determinant of mental 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 from the United 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-income persons in the private rental sector increased the prevalence of depressive symptoms in the United Kingdom. Oxford University Press 2016-09-15 2016-09-08 /pmc/articles/PMC5023793/ /pubmed/27613659 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aje/kww055 Text en © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Contributions
Reeves, Aaron
Clair, Amy
McKee, Martin
Stuckler, David
Reductions in the United Kingdom's Government Housing Benefit and Symptoms of Depression in Low-Income Households
title Reductions in the United Kingdom's Government Housing Benefit and Symptoms of Depression in Low-Income Households
title_full Reductions in the United Kingdom's Government Housing Benefit and Symptoms of Depression in Low-Income Households
title_fullStr Reductions in the United Kingdom's Government Housing Benefit and Symptoms of Depression in Low-Income Households
title_full_unstemmed Reductions in the United Kingdom's Government Housing Benefit and Symptoms of Depression in Low-Income Households
title_short Reductions in the United Kingdom's Government Housing Benefit and Symptoms of Depression in Low-Income Households
title_sort reductions in the united kingdom's government housing benefit and symptoms of depression in low-income households
topic Original Contributions
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5023793/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27613659
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aje/kww055
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