HISCOCK

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Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 59, No. 3, 2003, pp. 527--546

Residents and Residence: Factors Predicting the Health Disadvantage of Social Renters Compared to Owner-Occupiers Rosemary Hiscock∗ Karolinska Institutet

Sally Macintyre MRC Social & Public Health Sciences Unit

Ade Kearns University of Glasgow

Anne Ellaway MRC Social & Public Health Sciences Unit

Numerous studies have found that owner-occupiers live longer and stay healthier than renters. Epidemiologists often view housing tenure as a proxy for economic circumstances rather than as having directly health-promoting or damaging effects. Housing researchers, on the other hand, have tended to study physical and psychosocial aspects of housing that might directly impact upon health. Linking these two literatures, we analyzed nearly 3,000 postal questionnaires from a stratified random sample of Scottish adults. In particular, we examined differences between owners and social renters that might explain observed tenure differences ∗ Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rosemary Hiscock at Family Medicine Stockholm, Karolinska Institutet, Alfred Nobels All´e 12, 141 83 Huddinge, Sweden [e-mail: rosemary.hiscock@klinvet.ki.se]. The Transport, Housing and Wellbeing Study on which this article is based was supported by the ESRC Health Variation Programme (grant no. L128251017 1997–2000). The analysis described herein was undertaken for the first author’s doctorate. The authors would like to thank the respondents for filling out the questionnaire; Margaret Reilly, Lindsay Macauley, and Barbara Jamieson for help with the data collection process; and Carol Nicol and Geoff Der for help with computing and statistics. Sally Macintyre and Anne Ellaway are employed by the UK Medical Research Council as was Rosemary Hiscock at the time this research was undertaken. 527 C

2003 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues


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