Column on recent study by Janet Currie of Princeton.
"Losing your home to foreclosure can be bad for your health. Watching
your neighbors lose their homes to foreclosure can be just as
debilitating. And the cost of the additional visits to emergency rooms
caused by communitywide foreclosures among those caught up in the
foreclosure crisis are staggering.
Health and home mortgages? Foreclosures and emergency room visits?
Distressed homeowners and kidney failure? Is there really a connection?
<http://ec.tynt.com/b/rf?id=bNYbpAvBir4Pxiacwqm_6l&u=TheHill>That's what
I and my colleague Erdal Tekin discovered when we looked specifically at
communities hit hardest by the housing crisis in four states---Arizona,
California, Florida, and New Jersey---and compared them to the number of
heart attacks and stroke as well as treatment for conditions related to
hypertension and mental health. Writ large,our findings
<http://www.princeton.edu/%7Ejcurrie/publications/Foreclosure_Health_Jan_2014.pdf>indicate
that nationwide the 2.82 million foreclosures in 2009 resulted in an
additional 2.21 million emergency hospital visits---an increase in
hospitalizations that cost a whopping $5.6 billion in that year alone.
Economists and health experts alike have documented a relationship
between wealth and health, and between changes in wealth and changes in
health. But the links between losing one's home or worrying about it
when neighbors lose theirs and a rise in visits to hospital emergency
rooms may come as a surprise to academics and homeowners.
. . ..
The relationship between experiencing foreclosure or living in a
neighborhood with high foreclosure rates and more frequent and costly
visits to the hospital should be factored into our nation's health and
housing policies. Distressed homeowners need access to preventative
medical care that would allow them to more safely cope with the health
threats posed by foreclosure. And institutions that provide home
mortgages must be closely regulated to ensure that they do not threaten
the financial well being of homeowners with sudden surges in interest
rates or other predatory practices.
Perhaps it's time for policymakers to consider the role of home
mortgages in"Health Impact Assessments "
<http://www.cdc.gov/healthyplaces/hia.htm>to improve communities' public
health."
Read
more:http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/213835-health-we…
<http://ec.tynt.com/b/rf?id=bNYbpAvBir4Pxiacwqm_6l&u=TheHill>
--
Doctoral Student
Institute for Multi-Level Governance and Development
Department of Socioeconomics
WU/Vienna University of Economics and Business
Austria
http://www.wu.ac.at/mlgd