Measuring healthy and suitable housing for older people: A review of international indicators and data sets
A. Mihnovits, C.E. Nisos
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AbstractEveryone has a right to adequate housing. Housing is vital for shelter, private and personal space, and as a place to bring up a family. The cost and quality of housing can also impact on individuals’ income security, health status, intergenerational relations, engagement with others, autonomy and quality of life in general. A number of international frameworks such as WHO Age-Friendly Cities, the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, and the Sustainable Development Goals recognise this right and call for the measurement of accessibility and quality of housing. The following paper reviews internationally proposed indicators for healthy and suitable housing for older people. We examine availability of age-disaggregated data sets for these indicators and make recommendations on how the Global AgeWatch Index can be expanded to include healthy and suitable housing. The potential indicators of access to improved water source and sanitation are disaggregated by age and sex for EU countries only. Additionally, Eurostat offers a greater variety of indicators to capture healthy and suitable housing. There is a need for other national governments and multilateral organisations to report age, sex, and disability-disaggregated data for all countries to ensure progress on human development is measured more accurately and older people are not left behind in the development process.Keywords: housing, age, older people, measurement, international, data sets
A. Mihnovits, C.E. Nisos (2016). Measuring healthy and suitable housing for older people: A review of international indicators and data sets. Gerontechnology, 15(1), 17-24
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4017/gt.2016.15.1.004.00