The Effects of Rental Assistance on Children's Early Adulthood Outcomes

• In Event: Federal Rental Assistance: Markets, Mobility, and Well-Being

Abstract

A large literature documents the importance of where children grow up for their long-term wellbeing. The federal government plays a major role in shaping where low-income families live by providing rental assistance to millions of households through the public housing and Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) programs. Despite the scale of these programs, there is limited evidence on how they affect children’s long-run outcomes. Furthermore, existing work largely treats these programs as homogeneous and does not explore whether there is variation in impacts across places.

In this paper, we study the impacts of receiving federal low-income rental assistance on children’s long-run outcomes. Using administrative data from HUD, we identify the near-universe of individuals who received federal rental assistance during childhood from 1995 onwards. We link these individuals to federal tax records and administrative data from state and local agencies to track their labor market outcomes, safety net participation, involvement with the criminal justice system, family formation, and mortality into early adulthood.

For our main analysis, we exploit variation in the age children first move into public housing or receive a housing voucher to estimate the effects of receiving one more year of rental assistance on children’s long-run outcomes. We then explore spatial heterogeneity in impacts by estimating effects separately by program and city. Finally, we test whether local features – such as local program rules, housing market conditions, or population characteristics – are correlated with variation in program impacts across places.

Prior work estimates impacts only for older children or children in a particular city. We will provide the first evidence for the causal impacts of these major federal rental assistance programs nationally and for children of all ages. Moreover, we will shed light on which features of programs or places contribute to program efficacy. In this way, we anticipate our work will help policymakers decide how to maximize the effectiveness of rental assistance programs for low-income families.

Author

• Raheem Chaudhry, University of Washington
  Presenting Author