Childhood Housing Assistance Associated With Lower Rates Of Adult Diabetes And Hypertension, 1970-2021.

Abstract

Prior research has demonstrated potential health and social benefits associated with receipt of housing assistance during childhood. However, those findings have been primarily limited to health benefits experienced during childhood, rather than potential latent effects experienced as adults. Building on this work, we assessed whether there was an association between receipt of housing assistance during childhood and rates of adult obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics over the course of a fifty-two-year period (1970-2021), we matched children whose families received housing assistance with similar children whose families did not, and we tracked them from preconception to middle adulthood. Compared with not receiving childhood housing assistance, receiving five years or more of childhood housing assistance was associated with a 69 percent lower risk for diabetes and a 39 percent lower risk for hypertension in adulthood. First receiving housing assistance in the period from preconception through infancy was associated with a 67 percent lower risk for diabetes and a 41 percent lower risk for hypertension in adulthood. Results suggest that housing assistance deserves further consideration as a possible policy approach to address the rise of diabetes and hypertension in the US.