-->PONE-D-25-23017-->-->Impact of housing allowance programme on the physical and mental health of households in South Korea-->-->PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Lee,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

The manuscript has been evaluated by two reviewers, and their comments are available below.-->-->

The reviewers have raised a number of major concerns. They request improvements to the reporting of methodological aspects of the study, for example, regarding the exclusion criteria and more information on how the data collection was completed, as well as greater expansion in the discussion section.-->-->

Could you please carefully revise the manuscript to address all comments raised?

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 25 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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Avanti Dey, PhD

Staff Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

-->Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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-->2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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-->3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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-->5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)-->

Reviewer #1: This manuscript examines the effect of a housing allowance program in South Korea on reported physical and mental health outcomes of renters. The authors use a panel survey and difference in difference methods to examine the effects of the expansion of the program on reported outcomes, demonstrating that program recipients experienced health improvements following expansion. My main concerns relate to the lack of detail surrounding the program and the expansion and to the interpretation of the DID results. I offer suggestions to the authors to improve their work.

Major concerns:

More detail should be provided up front about what the housing allowance program actually does. For readers outside South Korea, there may not be familiarity with this type of program. Although the authors describe the program in the lit review section, more could be said in the introduction to motivate the study. It is not clear until page 5 whether this program is similar to the US housing voucher program or whether the subsidy is more open-ended. And even in this paragraph, the description of what the program actually provides is somewhat vague. Finally, even after getting to the end of this section, it was not entirely clear whether the housing allowance was provided as a cash transfer or in the form of a voucher. Finally, more detail should be provided on exactly how the expansion of the program worked in terms of the magnitude of what it provided.

There should be a more thorough justification of the inclusion of some characteristics in the model. The DID model should difference out time-invariant differences between the treatment and control groups, so there should not be a need to control for these. If they are included to enhance statistical precision, this should be made clear. As for time-varying covariates that differ between treatment and control, more attention should be paid to why we would expect these not to be on the pathway from the policy to the outcome. Are some of the covariates included (e.g. smoking status) time varying? If so, this could create serious bias if treatment affects these variables.

It is not clear to me who the control group is. Is it just households not receiving the housing allowance? How is this determined? Why would we expect trends in this group to be similar to those of the treatment group?

Similarly, is receiving the housing allowance a time-varying variable? If so, are some respondents receiving the allowance after 2015 but not before?

At the end of the first paragraph of the Data Analysis and Methodology section, there is a sentence that mentions that data deemed outliers were excluded, but there is no more detail about how this was determined. Outliers on which characteristics? How many were outliers? Just because an individual is an outlier, does not mean they should be excluded. Much more detail is needed.

DID assumes that—in the absence of treatment—trends for the treatment and control group would be identical. The parallel trends assumption cannot be tested, but must be justified based on theory and supporting empirical results. Authors often show event study results to confirm that treatment effects indeed only show up after the treatment. Something like this would go a long way to assuage my concerns that the models are simply picking up unrelated background trends.

Minor concerns

In Table 6, the coefficient for the DID variable is 0.08 and the standard error is 0.02, but it is not listed as significant.

No attempt is made in the results section to interpret the effect size. All statements are directional, but it is not clear if the effect is meaningfully large or reasonably sized.

DID models should also include dummy variables for individual cases. Although those variables may be in the model, it is not clear from Tables 5 and 6 whether this is the case.

Reviewer #2: Literature review:

-Consider citing "Bhat, A. C., Fenelon, A., & Almeida, D. M. (2025). Housing insecurity pathways to physiological and epigenetic manifestations of health among aging adults: a conceptual model. Frontiers in Public Health, 13, 1485371." to provide a conceptual model basis for how housing assistance programs can ameliorate the adverse health impacts of housing insecurity

-Please add more literature to support the disproportionate impacts on women/ethnic minorities/older adults. What are the factors that contribute to vulnerabilities for these groups? Also explain how this ties into the analyses you are conducting in the context of Korea.

Discussion:

-Both discussion and review of literature sections are a bit thin. There are several more studies than what you cited that discuss how governmental assistance programs ameliorate housing insecurity and related health effects (physical and mental health). Look into more of the work by Andrew Fenelon and others who have published extensively in this area and incorporate into these sections.

-Go more into depth regarding the similarities and differences in housing assistance programs in countries such as the US/UK and Korea

-In the US access to housing assistance programs also increases access to health insurance (Simon, A. E., Fenelon, A., Helms, V., Lloyd, P. C., & Rossen, L. M. (2017). HUD housing assistance associated with lower uninsurance rates and unmet medical need. Health Affairs, 36(6), 1016-1023.). Would this be expected to translate similarly in the context of Korea?

-Consider whether only examining household heads' health is a limiting factor, rather than examining health of multiple members of the household. Write about this in limitations.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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-->PONE-D-25-23017R1-->-->Impact of housing allowance programme on the physical and mental health of households in South Korea-->-->PLOS One

Dear Dr. Lee,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

The manuscript has been evaluated by two reviewers, and their comments are available below. Could you please revise the manuscript to carefully address the concerns raised?

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 13 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:-->

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols . Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols .

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Sincerely,

Alejandro Torrado Pacheco, PhD

Associate Editor

PLOS One

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If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

-->Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.-->

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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-->2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. -->

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

-->3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

-->4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.-->

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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-->5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.-->

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

-->6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)-->

Reviewer #2: Thank you for addressing reviewer comments. The manuscript is vastly improved now that authors have addressed all reviewer comments.

Reviewer #3: An interesting study with comprehensive analyses.

The manuscript could be further improved.

Page 12 Line 2-4: The sentence could be improved e.g. A TWFE event study replaces a single pre-post treatment indicator with a series of year-by-year interaction terms. This approach allows researchers to formally test the key parallel trends assumption and to trace the dynamic, year-over-year effects of the policy following the 2015 reform (Clarke 5 & Tapia-Schythe, 2021; Sun & Abraham, 2021).

The statistical software used, including its publisher and version, along with the level of significant applied are to be stated.

Table 2: Adjusted R^2, RMSE, F-Statistic could be presented.

The assumptions fulfilment for the statistical test are to be mentioned.

Table 1, 2: The N for the intervention group and control group are to be stated.

All references in the text and the reference list are to follow journal’s format.

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Reviewer #2: Yes: Aarti C. Bhat

Reviewer #3: No

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Impact of housing allowance programme on the physical and mental health of households in South Korea

PONE-D-25-23017R2

Dear Dr. Lee,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Marianne Clemence

Staff Editor

PLOS One

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Reviewers' comments:

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-->Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.-->

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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-->2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. -->

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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-->3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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-->4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.-->

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

-->5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.-->

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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-->6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)-->

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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Reviewer #3: No

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