Dinnertime Must Read: Janet Currie: Health, Wealth and Foreclosure

Janet Currie: Health, Wealth and Foreclosure: “Losing your home to foreclosure can be bad…

…for your health. Watching your neighbors lose their homes to foreclosure can be just as debilitating…. Nationwide the 2.82 million foreclosures in 2009 resulted in an additional 2.21 million emergency hospital visits—-an increase in hospitalizations that cost a whopping $5.6 billion in that year alone…. Many middle class Americans are only one medical emergency away from bankruptcy without even factoring in the loss of a home or the inability to sell their homes due the sharply deteriorated community housing values….

Now it could be that a sudden wave of serious mental and physical illness swept through neighborhoods experiencing higher rates of foreclosure or that the overall higher rates of poor health among low-income wage earners contributed to the inability of some of them to cover their monthly mortgage payments. But our study accounted for both factors…