Summary
There is a widely held belief that children’s general and psychological health benefits from owning and/or interacting with pets. In this study, authors aimed to determine whether children who live with a dog or cat in their home have better mental and physical health outcomes compared with children without such a pet, using secondary analysis of household survey data from the 2003 California Health Interview Survey. Children in pet-owning households were compared with children in non-pet owning households using a weighted propensity score regression approach.
Results demonstrated strong confounding effects. Unadjusted analyses found that children in pet-owning households were significantly healthier than children in non-owning households in terms of, for example, better general health, higher activity level, and less concern from parents regarding mood, behavior, and learning ability.
However, when estimates were adjusted using the double robust approach, the effects were smaller and no longer statistically significant. The results indicate that the benefits of owning pets observed in this study were largely explained by confounding factors.
Publication Authors:
- Jeremy V. Miles
- Layla Parast
- Susan H. Babey, PhD
- et al