Troubles Paying Rent or Being Forced to Move Linked to Lower Levels of Sleep

Summary: People who are having trouble paying for housing and at risk of losing their homes sleep, on average, twenty-two minutes less per night than those who are home-secure. The study shows a link between home insecurity and sleep disruptions.

Source: Rand Corporation

People who are unable to make their rent or mortgage payments sleep less than than their peers who don’t have such problems, and those who are forced to move because of financial problems sleep even less, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

The study, which followed 1,046 people receiving welfare in California over several years, is the first to analyze the relationship between housing insecurity and sleep outcomes after controlling for sleep duration and sleep quality measured prior to experiences with housing insecurity.

The study found that people who were unable to make a rent or mortgage payment slept on average 22 fewer minutes a night than their peers who were able to make their rent or mortgage payments.

People who were forced to move because they could not make their rent or mortgage payments slept on average 32 fewer minutes a night than their peers who were not forced to move. The findings are published online by the journal Sleep.

“This is the first study that demonstrates that housing insecurity represents a distinct impediment to healthy sleep duration and quality,” said Robert Bozick, the study’s lead author and an adjunct researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “The stability and condition of one’s home environment are critically important for health and well-being.”

The study analyzed information from the California Socioeconomic Survey, a longitudinal study conducted by RAND of participants in the state’s welfare program, which is called CalWORKs.

The survey follows a random sample of 1,657 adults drawn from a population of 15,600 economically disadvantaged families who first enrolled in CalWORKs between 2011 and 2014 in one of six diverse counties: Alameda, Fresno, Los Angeles, Riverside, Sacramento and Stanislaus.

This shows a worried looking young woman
The study found that people who were unable to make a rent or mortgage payment slept on average 22 fewer minutes a night than their peers who were able to make their rent or mortgage payments. Image is in the public domain

The new RAND study used information from a sample of 1,046 participants who participated in surveys during 2015-16 and 2017-18, and who answered questions about sleep duration, sleep quality and housing insecurity.

The reductions in sleep quality detailed by the study were small to moderate by conventional standards, but researchers say that sleep is cumulative such that slight reductions accrue over time. This accumulation in turn can create more pronounced sleep deficits.

“Considering the downstream health implications of housing insecurity is particularly timely given the economic fall-out from the coronavirus pandemic,” said Bozick, who is a senior fellow at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. “National surveys show many Americans are having trouble making their housing payments, which may lead to greater reliance on social safety net programs like welfare in the near future.”

Funding: Support for the study was provided by California Department of Social Services. Other authors of the study are Wendy Troxel and Lynn Karoly of RAND.

About this sleep research news

Source: Rand Corporation
Contact: Warren Robak – Rand Corporation
Image: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Closed access.
Housing insecurity and sleep among welfare recipients in California” by Robert Bozick, Wendy M Troxel, Lynn A Karoly. Sleep


Abstract

Housing insecurity and sleep among welfare recipients in California

Study Objectives

To estimate the effect of housing insecurity on sleep duration and sleep quality.

Methods

Using longitudinal data from a sample of 1,046 welfare recipients in the state of California followed from 2015–2016 through 2017–2018, we regressed self-reported measures of sleep duration and sleep quality recorded in 2017–2018 on experiences of housing insecurity in the prior year. We applied propensity score weights to attenuate potential bias from an array of observed covariates, including sleep duration and sleep quality measured prior to experiences with housing insecurity.

Results

Sample members who were unable to make their rent/mortgage payments slept on average 22 fewer minutes a night and had lower quality sleep than those who were able to make their rent/mortgage payments. Sample members who were forced to move because of an inability to make rent/mortgage payments slept on average 32 fewer minutes a night and had lower quality sleep than those who were not forced to move.

Conclusions

By compromising sleep health, housing insecurity represents a distinct form of stress in the lives of economically-disadvantaged adults, which could also contribute to other health disparities.

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