The Economic Impact of Substandard Housing Conditions Among North Carolina Children

ABSTRACT:

With significant numbers of North Carolinians going without health care it is easy to pay less attention to reducing the environmental factors that result in poor health outcomes. The place you call home, whether a single room, apartment or owned home is the place where people spend the majority of their time. We have known for years that substandard housing can have a significant negative impact on children yet we have been extremely slow to aggressively fund efforts to remove these health factors from existing housing stock. Over the past few years, several research studies have calculated the economic cost of specific environmental risk factors on children. Cost figures range from $404 million in Montana to $1.87 billion in the State of Washington. Although the preceding studies focused on the impact of environmental risk factors on all children, this particular study focused on the impact of environmental-related risk factors on the health of NC children only living in substandard housing.