The impact on your health of renting an apartment compared to owning one is nearly double that of being out of work versus having paid employment. Fortunately, these effects are reversible if you manage to buy a place to live, said British researchers who stress the importance of housing policy in health improvement.
Researchers controlled for confounding variables
Additional health information was subsequently collected from the 1420 BHPS survey respondents, and blood samples taken for DNA methylation analysis. When studying all the data, the researchers accounted for potentially influential factors including gender, nationality, education level, socioeconomic status, diet, cumulative stress, financial hardship, urban environments; weight, and smoking.
Living in public housing subsidized by the authorities – with its lower cost and greater security of tenure – was no different than outright ownership in terms of its association with biological ageing once additional housing variables were included.