‘Worrisome’ data link eviction to poor health in children
Eviction was associated with increased odds of poor health in children and their parents, according to a study published in Pediatrics.
According to the findings, children who were forced to move in the past 5 years were more likely to be in fair or poor health, at developmental risk, and also more likely to have been admitted to the hospital from the ED.
Co-author Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba, PhD, MPH, executive director of Children’s HealthWatch and an assistant research professor at Boston University, told Healio that the project began with an interest in how evictions affected “very young children” in the last decade, following the Great Recession in 2008.
“We felt like there was a really important story to tell about eviction among renters, and the ways that that disruption ripples to all aspects of family life, including all kinds of other basic needs that are really important for healthy child development, like utilities, and health care, child care, and obviously, housing,” Ettinger de Cuba said.
“The focus on young kids really comes from the fact that children are in the sensitive period of development, with the fastest brain and body growth of their entire lifetime, and that really lays the foundation for future health and cognitive, social, emotional, and motor skills.”
Ettinger de Cuba and colleagues surveyed 26,441 caregivers for renter households in Baltimore, Boston, Little Rock, Arkansas; Philadelphia and Minneapolis, and asked questions about family demographics and any child or adult hardships being experienced. She said they also asked for details about eviction history because court data often do not include “informal” evictions, which take place without a court action.
They found that 3.9% of their interviewees reported an eviction of any kind in the previous 5 years, and of those evicted, 57% had gone through formal, legal eviction processes, whereas an additional 43% faced informal eviction.
Children who had experienced an eviction had higher rates of public insurance and lower rates of breastfeeding history, and were more likely to be in fair or poor health (adjusted OR [aOR] = 1.43; 95% CI: 1.17–1.73) at developmental risk (aOR = 1.55; 95% CI: 1.32–1.82), or to have been admitted to a hospital from the ED (aOR = 1.24; 95% CI: 1.01–1.53).
The children were also more likely to have moved multiple times or to have experiences household food insecurity, child food insecurity, energy insecurity, a health care hardship or a child care constraint.
“It challenges any assumption that kids this age can just be protected from [eviction], or that they're too young to experience the negative impacts of eviction,” Ettinger de Cuba said. “I think it really shows how vulnerable these young children and their families are to evictions, and how there’s potential for very long-term harm. That is worrisome for sure, to understate it.”
The researchers concluded that robust policy solutions to prevent and mitigate eviction, as well as community, health care and other supports, are needed for families that face eviction to address health impacts.
“Pediatricians and pediatric providers have a very important role to play in advocating for policy changes that will decrease the risk of families experiencing an eviction and also obviously then preventing harm to child health,” Ettinger de Cuba said.
Collapse
Read more about