Impacts of Housing Costs on Health and Satisfaction With Life Circumstances: Evidence From Australia
利用澳大利亚面板数据和工具变量方法，研究发现住房成本上升显著改善自评身体健康，但降低生活满意度，对情绪健康无显著影响，且效应集中在房主、高学历和年长者中。
This paper examines the causal impacts of rising housing costs on individual health and satisfaction with life circumstances, using a fixed-effects instrumental variable approach and individual-level panel data from Australia. Relying on the historical patterns of immigrant settlement, we construct an instrumental variable that exploits exogenous variation in housing costs driven by foreign investments that flow differentially into localities. We find that rising housing costs-as measured by composite housing costs faced by homeowners and renters living in an area-have a significant positive impact on individuals' self-assessed physical health and a significant negative impact on satisfaction ratings, but no significant impact on self-assessed emotional health. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the positive effects on physical health are mainly concentrated among homeowners, the well-educated, and older individuals.