The correlation between poor quality housing and children's physical health has been well documented. Yet a limitation of the literature is the prevalence of selection bias and comparatively little evidence on children's mental health outcomes. This study explored the role of housing (and neighbourhood) quality in explaining differences in childhood mental and physical health between those living in social-rented flats and houses. The social housing allocation process mitigated unobserved differences across the two groups addressing some of the issues of endogenous selection, although stopping short of representing causal identification. Poorer housing quality explained over 50% of the 0.18 standard deviation deficit in the mental health of children in flats compared with houses, with primary mediators being damp and mould, home temperature, and mother's perception of her own home, but played no role in explaining physical health deficits of children in flats. In contrast, neighbourhood quality did not account for any of the mental and physical health deficits observed. Taken together, the present study adds to the evidence that the home environment of children in social housing is related to their development, whilst taking us beyond the existing literature in terms of accounting for selection bias.

劣质住房与儿童身体健康之间的相关性已得到充分证明。然而，文献的一个局限性是选择偏见的普遍性和儿童心理健康结果的证据相对较少。本研究探讨了住房（和社区）质量在解释居住在社会出租公寓和房屋中的儿童心理和身体健康差异方面的作用。社会住房分配过程减轻了两组之间未观察到的差异，解决了内生选择的一些问题，尽管没有代表因果关系。与房屋相比，较差的住房质量解释了公寓儿童心理健康 0.18 标准差缺陷的 50% 以上，主要介质是潮湿和霉菌，家庭温度和母亲对自己家的看法，但在解释公寓儿童身体健康缺陷方面没有任何作用。相比之下，社区质量并没有解释观察到的任何心理和身体健康缺陷。总之，本研究增加了社会住房中儿童的家庭环境与他们的发展相关的证据，同时在考虑选择偏差方面使我们超越了现有文献。