Recipients of PSC Small Grant Awards
Handling Missing Data: Using Multiple Imputation in Stata
Sarah Seelye
The ICPSR course on multiple imputation will be useful as I work on a new research project that examines the relationship between housing assistance and health using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). In this project, my co-authors and I examine the cumulative effects of various types of housing assistance on physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes using longitudinal data from the PSID. Compared to the significant body of research connecting housing affordability and stability, housing quality, and neighborhood conditions to health, we know considerably less about the importance of housing assistance to health. Housing assistance may lead to positive physical and mental health outcomes by reducing stress and anxiety, freeing up income to purchase healthy food or invest in human capital, and by improving housing and neighborhood conditions. However, it is possible that housing assistance negatively affects health if families use additional income to engage in negative health behaviors or if housing assistance leads families to be concentrated in substandard housing or unsafe neighborhoods.