Housing cost overburden and population health: cross-country evidence from Europe before the pandemic

The recent surge in housing prices across Europe has placed a considerable financial burden on families, with potential effects across multiple dimensions, including health. This study investigates the relationship between housing cost overburden and self-assessed health status and premature mortality across 26 European Union countries between 2011 and 2019, before the pandemic. We estimate a general health production function using a generalised least squares regression with both robust and Driscoll – Kraay standard errors. We conduct a quantile regression via the method of moments to provide additional insights into the relationship between health and housing cost overburden along the distribution of health variables. Controlling for socio-demographic and economic country profiles, our results confirm that housing cost overburden is associated with worse health status. The association with premature mortality appears to be stronger in countries with lower rates of premature mortality or with a lower share of people reporting lower health status, suggesting that housing cost overburden is an important health determinant. In these well-performing countries, even modest improvements in addressing the housing cost burden may contribute to improve health outcomes.