Nik Lomax - Simulating the effects of income and housing policies on Quality Adjusted Life Expectancy

• Presenting author: Nik Lomax (University of Leeds)

• Authors: Nik Lomax, Robert Clay, Luke Archer, Hugh Rice, Alison Heppenstall, Andreas Hoehn

• Session: B02A - Population [2] - Tuesday 11:00-12:30 - Ceremonial Hall

The amount of disposable income available to a household, and the quality of housing provision, have a quantifiable effect on both physical and mental health outcomes for individuals. Income and housing are both areas that can be intervened on directly by using policy levers: in the income domain by increasing wages and benefits and in the housing domain by enforcing standards and retrofitting. In this paper, the effect on physical and mental health of policies that increase disposable income or improve housing will be tested using a discrete time dynamic microsimulation called MINOS. The model takes as input the 12 wave UK Household Longitudinal Study and results are representative for the UK population. Calculations of the change in utility score for both mental and physical health, measured by the 0-100 scale Short-Form 12 (SF-12), can be translated to an increase in Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY) which are a function of Quality Adjusted Life Expectancy (QALE). We are therefore able to demonstrate the improvement in QALE that results from introducing a certain set of policies, relative to the baseline model run. Further, MINOS is operationalised in a modular way, meaning that pathway transition models that connect interventions to outcomes can be added or adapted based on feedback and so provides an open-box way of assessing the effects of different policy interventions.