Relationship between health and residential moves
About 2 mins
Key points
- One in eight 17-year-olds who had moved house more than 3 times said their health was either ‘fair’ or ‘poor’ compared with 1 in 17 with no house moves.
- More than twice as many 17-year-olds who had moved three or more times said their health was ‘fair’ or ‘poor’, compared with those who had not moved at all.
Moving home matters for health, as instability at an early age can interrupt education and social participation, which can negatively affect people later in life. Moving home in childhood has been associated with lower socio-emotional well-being at ages five and ten.
This chart shows how self-reported health differs for a cohort of 17-year-olds according to how frequently they have moved house over their lives.
- There is a difference of 6.7 percentage points between the proportion reporting less than good health if they have moved over three times, in comparison with those that have not moved in this 17-year period.
- The proportion of 17-year-olds who have moved three or more times are more than twice as likely to rate their health as poor compared with those who have not moved (2.3% compared to 1%).
Factors such as social backgrounds and the life events that may trigger house moves are likely to explain a great deal of the association we see. However, the study cited above by the Centre for Population Change found the effect of frequent moves persisted even when controlling for these factors.
- Moving is captured by a recorded change of address between waves in the Millennium Cohort Study. As households could, in theory, move multiple times between waves, these figures may underestimate the actual number of moves.
Source: University College London, Millennium Cohort Study Sweep 7, UK, 2024
