Evidence on the Relationship Between Unaffordable Housing and Poor Health

This paper examines the relationship between poor health and poor housing affordability for Australians, to answer two essential questions for Australian policy makers: Does poor health lead to unaffordable housing? And does unaffordable housing affect people’s health? Analysis was based upon two large Australian datasets, the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey and the General Social Survey, (GSS). We highlight the populations most vulnerable to affordability-related poor health such as lone parents and their children and older renters Our descriptive results add to a growing pool of research that shows unaffordable housing to be unevenly experienced in Australia, with some groups especially vulnerable. These findings provide new information on the dramatic scale of vulnerability among Australians, and key indications for policy makers and service providers. Striking among these findings, we see that more older private renters live in unaffordable housing than live in affordable housing.