Introduction
The CDC’s PLACES program includes 40 measures that report on health outcomes, prevention practices, health risk behaviors, disability measures, health status measures, and health-related social needs.
Recently the housing market has been going through ups and downs. Today it is harder than ever to buy a house more or less rent an apartment. CDC believes that housing insecurity, which means unable to pay mortgage, rent, or utility bill, may be a reason for other health risk factors and other types of insecurities.
Data
The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) conducts a routine national survey known as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS). A multi-level regression and post-stratification approach was applied to BRFSS and ACS data to compute a detailed probability among adults who were not able to pay mortgage, rent, or utility bill in the past 12 months. The CDC released local level estimates on housing insecurity for August 2024.
Results
In Morris County, the estimated prevalence of housing insecurity among adults aged 18-64 years (%) was 8.8 with 95% CI ( 8.4, 10.7), and the age-adjusted prevalence (%) was 9.5 ( 8.4, 10.7) in 2022. In the Madison Track, the estimated prevalence of housing insecurity among adults aged 18-64 years (%) was 7.0 with 95% CI ( 6.1, 8.0) in 2022.
Conclusion
Understanding the difference in housing insecurity may give insight on reasons on why there may be additional insecurities in the areas where the housing insecurity is affecting the most.
This demographically shows areas where there may need to be more attention due to the insecurity that is leading to other issues.
About the Data
The CDC Places data sets are part of a series, spelling out the acronym as Place Level Analysis and Community Estimates. The latest estimates are for 2020 and 2021 for U.S. Census Tracts.
Other data sources visualized in the images here and on web maps are from the New Jersey Office of GIS (including County and Municipal Boundaries of New Jersey).
A webmap of the county level PLACES results can be found here:
A webmap of the census tract results for Madison can be found here: https://arcg.is/DPOj51
