Measuring the Stress of Moving Homes: Evidence from the New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure

Moving homes has long been considered stressful, but how stressful is it? This study is an original attempt to utilise a micro-level individual dataset in the New Zealand Government’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) to reconstruct the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) and thereby measure...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Urban science 2022-10, Vol.6 (4), p.75
Main Authors: Cheung, Ka-Shing, Wong, Daniel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Divorce
Home ownership
Homeowners
Households
Housing
housing tenure
Hypotheses
Hypothesis testing
Infrastructure
Literature reviews
Longitudinal studies
Measurement
Medical research
Neighborhoods
ownership
rental
Residence
Residential mobility
Social mobility
Social networks
Sociology
Stress
Stress (Psychology)
stress scale
Tenants
Well being
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Summary:Moving homes has long been considered stressful, but how stressful is it? This study is an original attempt to utilise a micro-level individual dataset in the New Zealand Government’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) to reconstruct the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) and thereby measure stress at a whole-of-population level. The effects of residential mobility on people’s mental well-being in the context of their stress-of-moving homes are examined. By using difference-in-differences analysis, this study scrutinises the stress level across movers, namely homeowners and renters (i.e., treatment groups) and non-movers (i.e., a control group). The results show that the change in residence increases people’s overall stress levels. Homeowners are more stressed than renters, with non-movers as the counterfactuals. Furthermore, the frequency of change in residences increases individual baseline stress levels. By progressing the understanding of such stresses, residential mobility researchers can contribute to broader discussions on how individuals’ interpersonal history and social mobility influence their experience. The whole-of-population-based SRRS will better advance our current ways of measuring mental stress at a population level, which is crucial to broader discussions of people’s well-being.
ISSN:2413-8851
2413-8851
DOI:10.3390/urbansci6040075