We use household-level data to study the causal effects of exogenous changes in housing wealth on health and the drug crisis in the US attributed to “deaths of despair”. We find that a one standard deviation positive shock in housing wealth increases the probability of an improvement in self-reported health (mental health) by 1.0 (1.10) percentage points, decreases the change in drug-related mortality rate by 4.3%, and has no effect on alcohol- or suicide-related deaths. The opposite effect also holds, such that a negative shock on wealth increases the probability of a decline in health. We also find that the impact of housing wealth on health varies across socioeconomic groups and is more pronounced in MSAs in which housing supply is more inelastic, which explains the differential effect of economic cycles across geographical areas. Our results suggest that housing-related policies could have important implications for general health outcomes as well as for the opioid crisis.

我们使用家庭水平的数据来研究住房财富的外源性变化对美国健康和因“绝望之死”造成的毒品危机的因果关系。我们发现，住房财富的一个标准偏差正冲击会使自我报告的健康（心理健康）改善的可能性增加1.0（1.10）个百分点，使与毒品有关的死亡率的变化降低4.3％，并且对与酒精或自杀相关的死亡没有影响。相反的效果也成立，对财富的负面冲击增加了健康下降的可能性。我们还发现，住房财富对健康的影响因社会经济群体而异，并且在MSA中更为明显，在MSA中，住房供应更加缺乏弹性，这解释了各地域经济周期的不同影响。