Wilson, Benjamin, Natalie June Kane, Neal Wilson, Peter J. Eaton, and Doug Bowles. 2018. “Housing, Health, and History: Interdisciplinary Spatial Analysis in Pursuit of Equity for Future Generations”. In Intergenerational Responsibility in the 21st Century, 57-82. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press.
Abstract
Where we live plays a critical role in determining socio-economic status and lifetime health outcomes. Developing insights from recent research, this chapter tracks childhood asthma encounters from the hospital to the home, examining health as wealth in a socio-economic and historical context. Spatial inference and visual presentation of the data in maps reinforces this analysis. This interdisciplinary research finds that a child’s home environment is a relevant predictor of their health. These results align with innovations in healthcare provisioning practices that are achieving improved health outcomes by extending treatment regimens from the doctor’s office into the patient’s home. On the basis of these results, it is argued that in economics and healthcare, a responsible path forward is to go beyond traditional policies and treatments that alleviate specific adverse symptoms of intergenerational inequality; and instead take a holistic approach to health and well-being at multiple scales of economic and human geography.