Living by the sea is good for your health
Sick people have been sent to the seaside for centuries and now a study has proven that living by the coast is good for your health.
Bad news for inland folk, good news for the majority of New Zealanders, as about 65 per cent of Kiwis live within five kilometres of the coast.
The study, published in the Health and Place journal this week, examined census data to determine how health varied across England.
After adjusting for age, sex, greenspace density and socio-economic factors, there was an increase in people reporting good health the closer to the coast they lived. The reporting of the link was also stronger among poorer communities.
However, the problem for poorer communities – in New Zealand as in Britain – is getting a financial toehold beside the sea.
Geography professor and director of the GeoHealth Laboratory at the University of Canterbury, Simon Kingham, said that, because living by the sea was seen as desirable, it was therefore more expensive. “Thus you often find wealthier people living nearer the sea. We know that people with greater income generally have better health and therefore you would possibly expect people living nearer the sea to be healthier.”
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