Living in a run down home can have a major impact on a child's education and emotional wellbeing, a new study suggests.

US researchers looked at 2,400 children, teenagers and young adults over a six-year period. They found that children who lived in poor quality housing tended to suffer more from emotional and behavioural difficulties, such as depression, anxiety and aggression.

As the children got older, their school work also suffered.

Run down houses had problems such as peeling paint, broken windows, leaking roofs and vermin problems.

"Through no fault of their own, children and teens whose families live in substandard housing are paying a steep price in terms of their emotional and behavioral wellbeing. That carries on into school and creates deficits that are extremely difficult to overcome," commented one of the study's lead authors, Prof Rebekah Levine Coley of Boston College.

The research also found that children from low-income homes who moved around a lot were also more prone to emotional and behavioural problems.

While a single move could help if it led to, for example, living in a safer area or having access to better schools, the cumulative effect of moving a lot - known as residential instability - appeared to a take a toll on entire families.

"A toll was taken not only on children, but their parents, generating stressful conditions within families," Prof Coley noted.

In fact overall, parents who lived in poor quality housing tended to display more signs of depression and anxiety.

"There's a tremendous amount of attention paid to affordability and that's a critical issue for low-income families. What our findings suggest is that housing quality may be more important when we are concerned with the growth and development of children," Prof Coley added.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, Developmental Psychology.