By Tyler Eutsler, NLIHC Research Intern
In a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, “Eviction, inability to pay rent, and youth mental health: a fixed effects study,” the authors explore the impacts of housing insecurity on the mental well-being of children. The results indicate that evictions and a household's inability to pay rent/mortgage are associated with worse mental health outcomes and sleep disturbance symptoms for children in those households. Though children do not make housing payments or provide for basic household needs, the stress resulting from difficulty in meeting these demands affects every household member. Eviction displacing young people can sever their social bonds with peers and neighbors and can be especially harmful if forming new bonds is challenging.
Using national data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, the authors studied a cohort of children aged 9 and 10 when their caregivers were first surveyed in 2016-2018, with three follow-up surveys conducted through 2021. Each year, caregivers were asked about two forms of housing instability: 1) eviction in the past year as a result of not paying rent/mortgage, and 2) missing rent/mortgage payments in the past year because they could not afford to pay. In addition, the authors tracked three youth mental health outcomes using caregivers’ responses to the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children and Child Behavioral Checklist: sleep disturbances, “internalized symptoms” (depression, anxiety, somatic complaints), and “externalized symptoms” or behaviors (impulsivity, disruptiveness, aggression). The authors explored these outcomes based on child age, household income, and the number of employed caregivers in the home over time and adjusted their analyses for family changes (e.g., parent separation, death of a family member, imprisonment, birth of a sibling) that could potentially affect both the ability to pay rent/mortgage and the mental health of children in the household.
The study’s findings indicate that both eviction and inability to pay rent/mortgage were significantly associated with worse mental health outcomes and sleep disturbances among children in impacted households. Experiencing eviction was associated with more severe internalizing and externalizing symptoms, and a less severe, yet significant association with sleep disturbances; the impact was strongest in the first year following an eviction. The inability to pay rent/mortgage was consistently and strongly linked to increases in all three mental health outcomes.
Furthermore, the findings suggest that the stressful threat of housing loss may be a greater driver of harmful mental health outcomes for children than eviction itself. The authors note that this may indicate a much larger share of children are at risk of long-term negative impacts to their mental health than previously believed, as difficulty in paying rent is much more common than evictions—half of all U.S. renters are housing cost-burdened compared to an estimated “one in seven” risk of children experiencing eviction, suggesting that the study has critical implications for public health.
Interventions that reduce housing cost burden by increasing wages, expanding affordable housing supply, or offering rental assistance could yield substantial spillover benefits for children’s mental health. Additionally, mechanisms to reduce eviction risk and forced displacement, such as “right to counsel” programs, could provide similar benefits for young people’s psychological wellness.
Read the article here.