Associations Between Public Housing Residency and Health Behaviors in a Cross-Sectional Sample of Boston Adults

This study aims to provide improved estimates of the association between public housing development (PHD) residency and health behavior outcomes, accounting for sources of confounding frequently overlooked in prior research. We combined novel data from two health surveys fielded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2015–2016. We fit a propensity score model of PHD residency to generate inverse probability of treatment weights, which work to synthesize as-good-as random assignment to PHD residency. We estimated sample average treatment effects using weighted logistic regression for PHD residency and amount of water consumption, primary water source, sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption, and current smoking. Our main results indicate that compared with non-PHD residents, PHD residents in our sample have statistically significantly higher probabilities of adverse health behaviors, including a 9% lower probability of consuming tap water (vs. bottled), 12% greater probability of consuming any SSB monthly (vs. none), and 6% greater probability of currently smoking. Our findings indicate that PHD residency may be associated with adverse health behaviors and therefore suggests the urgency of better understanding this association to develop housing policy that supports the health of PHD residents.