Households’ regional housing affordability strain and mental health: insights from the Netherlands

Housing affordability pressures are increasingly recognised as a key determinant of mental well-being, yet existing research largely focuses on individual or household-level cost burdens, omitting the spatial context. This paper argues that housing market pressures are subject to regional market dynamics, shaping mental health in addition to individual housing affordability stress. We examine how regional housing affordability strain is associated with mental health in the Netherlands by combining LISS Panel survey data with geo-coded administrative data from Statistics Netherlands. We use a novel rank-based measure of regional price-income mismatch to capture the relative position of households within regional housing markets. Regression results show that regional housing market pressure is negatively associated with mental health in 2023, although no comparable association is found in 2018. The 2023 relationship persists after controlling for individual characteristics and household-level affordability stress. These findings suggest that the mental health consequences of the housing crisis extend beyond individual cost burdens, highlighting the importance of regional housing market dynamics as an independent source of stress.