Housing and health: the effect of improved flooring on the incidence of diarrhea in children under five years old
Date
2016-06
Authors
Ariate, Maan Marie B.
Jambalos, Raphael Justin A.
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Abstract
Many studies have determined that inadequate housing has significant negative effects on health however; few have sought to determine the relationship between the building materials used for housing on the health of individuals. With the Philippines as a case study, we will assess the effect of the main materials used for flooring on the incidence of diarrhea in children under five years of age. We used two propensity score matching techniques on the 2013 National Demographic and Health Survey, namely the nearest neighbor matching and the stratification matching methods. The results suggest that having improved flooring (i.e. flooring that is made from any material other than earth or sand) decreases the incidence of diarrhea in children under the age of five. Having improved flooring decreases the incidence of disease among children under the age of five by 7.5%. Furthermore, the incidence of diarrhea among non-poor children living in both urban and rural areas decreased by 53.5% and 21.9%, respectively. Poor children living in urban areas have decreased incidence of diarrhea if living in households with improved flooring. The government should also focus on giving the non-poor opportunity to purchase housing improvements for flooring through loans or subsidy as they are the group with the most to gain in flooring improvements. The results support the intuition that there are possible cost savings in focusing on government projects that cut across different target areas such as housing and health, freeing up more resources that can be used for other government development projects.
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Keywords
housing, health