Housing and children's development and wellbeing: A scoping study

The aim of this scoping study is to review the existing literature on the connections between housing and childhood development and wellbeing and to investigate the value and feasibility of conducting empirical research in the Australian context. Specifically, the research questions addressed are: → What aspects of housing and housing assistance have been demonstrated to influence children's development and wellbeing? → What are the implications of this influence for housing policy and programs? → What data sources are currently available that could be used to investigate the link between housing and housing assistance characteristics and child development and wellbeing outcomes in Australia? → Based on these data sources, what methodologies and analytic approaches could be employed to examine direct and indirect associations between housing and children's development and wellbeing? Links between housing and children's development and wellbeing. Child and adolescent wellbeing is crucial to Australia's social and economic future. Early child development is vital in setting the foundation for health as well as social and economic activity across the life-course. Developmental outcomes in terms of learning and school achievement play a considerable additional role in the school-to-work transition and subsequent labour market outcomes. Existing evidence has established that interventions are more effective if implemented earlier rather than later in life. The connections between housing and childhood development are well-recognised in the international literature. However, there is currently a dearth of empirical evidence about the nature of these connections in Australia. Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological theory (Bronfenbrenner 1979b; Bronfenbrenner & Ceci 1994) provides the overarching conceptual framework for understanding the factors that influence child development as revealed uncovered in the literature review. It is premised on the belief that features outside the child's ecology or immediate environment can, and frequently do, impact on the child's development. Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological theory challenges the predominant view that individuals have the capacity to act independently and to make their own free choices by drawing attention to the proximal contexts of: → Family, school and community. → Distal structural components of society, culture, economic influence and politics that are largely outside the sphere of the child's and family's influence. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner's model (Bronfenbrenner 1979b; Bronfenbrenner & Ceci 1994), recent studies such as Bartlett (1997) have pointed out that the material, spatial and symbolic aspects of a child's physical home environment significantly influences a child's development. This is founded on the view espoused by Bronfenbrenner (1979) that a child's development is embedded within a set of social settings. Aspects of the home that have been empirically identified by the existing literature to influence children's development include: → environmental allergens → toxicants → cleanliness, housing disrepair and safety → building height and opportunities for outdoor play → crowding → housing affordability → homeownership → frequent residential moves → homelessness → neighbourhoods. The literature review conducted in this study draws from a range of disciplines including sociology, epidemiology, economics, housing policy, social welfare, health, medicine, child development and psychology. The links between each housing or neighbourhood variable listed above and child developmental outcomes at various stages of child development are summarised in Table 1. Key findings include: 1. There are strong links between various housing variables and child development outcomes. Some of these links are irreversible and continue on into adulthood, such as the negative effects of toxicants on various dimensions of child development. 2. There are variations in the effects of a housing characteristic at different stages of a child's life course, For example, unaffordable housing affects children most during early childhood via its adverse impact on the family's ability to access basic necessities. Neighbourhood effects are strongest on adolescents - in particular their educational outcomes due to the influence of peers. 3. Factors shaping child development and wellbeing are complex, often interrelated and frequently multiplied by coincident factors. As a result, housing can impact on children's development and wellbeing through both direct and indirect mechanisms. For example, the inability to afford housing is linked to frequent moves, shared housing with other families, crowding, or even homelessness. However, there are trade-offs with potentially positive neighbourhood effects. 4. Housing aspects can exert strong indirect influences on children's development via influences on parental practices, especially for infants and young children who spend most of their time indoors under parental supervision. Policy implications, and limitations of the evidence to date. The majority of the studies reviewed have focused on children's neurological and cognitive development, mental health, school achievement and specific physical health outcomes. Most are from the United States. To date studies have uncovered both positive and negative effects of housing assistance on children's outcomes with no consensus on which effects dominate. There is noticeably a lack of empirical research conducted in Australia on the links between housing and child development, with the rare exception of an Australian study by Edwards and Bromfield (2008). The Australian statistical data on housing and child developmental outcomes and our review of Australian housing policies as pertains to children indicate that: → Associations between various housing aspects and child developmental outcomes uncovered in the overseas literature also exist within the Australian context. → There are housing policies in Australia that aim to promote positive developmental outcomes among Australian children. However, without empirical analysis using Australian data, it is not possible to assess the causal effects of housing and housing policies on child development in Australia. Three issues arise as being of particular policy concern and in urgent need of research attention in Australia: → Statistical data shows that children make up a significant proportion of the homeless in Australia. → The housing experiences of Indigenous children are significantly worse than those experienced by non-Indigenous children. → Housing stress is particularly prevalent among households with children in Australia. However, much of the evidence on factors determining child developmental outcomes arising from the international literature may not be wholly applicable in the Australian context. Policy analysis and development in Australia will be clouded by differences between features of the Australian socio-demographic, economic and institutional environment and those of other countries. It is by establishing (or rejecting) causal links between housing-related factors and children's developmental outcomes that empirical research can best inform policy. However, establishing causality is notoriously difficult in social research and there are added methodological challenges in the current context. The first is the need to simultaneously control for an array of housing and non-housing related factors that impact upon developmental outcomes, and in particular disentangling these from the well-established gradient between socio-economic status and children's outcomes. Second, there is no clear-cut temporal relationship between housing circumstances and outcomes. The effects may materialise with a lag or cumulate gradually making the link between contemporaneously measured housing and outcome variables somewhat tenuous. For this reason the usual econometric advantages of longitudinal data (associated with repeated observations) does not apply, but rather longitudinal surveys provide superior measurement of housing histories and developmental outcomes. Due to the fact that housing and outcome variables may have very different connotations for Indigenous and non-Indigenous families, it is argued that outcomes for Indigenous children need to be investigated separately. Addressing the evidence gap: an Australian data audit. In light of these methodological challenges, an extensive audit of national, state-based and Indigenous-specific child health surveys was undertaken to identify datasets that may be suitable for analysing the effect of housing on child developmental outcomes. The audit has revealed numerous datasets with an excellent range of child development outcome variables along with key housing variables and good controls for family socio-economic status and other potentially confounding variables.