Housing and Human Capital

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This session contains four papers studying how housing markets and public policy shape human capital development, economic mobility, and inequality across the life course. The papers span a range of policy contexts, including neighborhood revitalization initiatives, evictions, mortgage regulation, and public housing construction. Together, they focus on the ways in which policy environments, and the institutional forces that determine housing access, affect long-run economic and social outcomes.

The first paper, by Micah Baum, studies a 1998 Houston housing reform that spurred single-family home construction in the city's downtown, drawing affluent households into previously lower-income areas. Using administrative and survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the author studies how this neighborhood change affected the long-run outcomes of children previously living in downtown Houston. He finds that the resulting neighborhood revitalization benefited children of homeowners while harming children of renters, showing how place-based policies can widen inequality among incumbents. 

The second paper, by Kelcie Ferrara-Gerson and Julia Turner, investigates how mortgage underwriting constraints mediate the relationship between student debt and homeownership. Exploiting 2017 policy changes by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that altered how student loan obligations enter debt-to-income calculations, the authors combine credit bureau data with a structural lifecycle model to show how financial policy shapes access to housing wealth for debt-burdened households.

The third paper, by Brian Asquith, Kate Pennington, and Charly Porcher, asks how the loss of stable, affordable housing in a high-productivity city affects long-run career outcomes. The authors study evictions stemming from the Ellis Act, which removed entire buildings from San Francisco's rent-controlled stock. Linking property records to employer-employee data, they follow displaced tenants, finding that displacement redirects tenants away from high-opportunity neighborhoods and generates persistent earnings losses. 

The fourth paper provides a historical perspective on urban housing policy, studying the long-run neighborhood effects of American public housing built between 1935 and 1973. The author, Beau Bressler, constructs a new national dataset of over one million public housing units and links it to neighborhood-level data spanning eight decades. He finds that public housing construction reinforced racial and economic segregation with lasting consequences for intergenerational mobility and children’s exposure to high-opportunity areas.

These papers collectively highlight how housing policies affect a range of individual outcomes, including human capital accumulation, labor market success, and wealth building. The session contributes rigorous causal evidence to ongoing policy debates about zoning reform, student debt relief, tenant protections, and the legacy of mid-century urban policy. Together, this panel shows how housing policies can interact with existing socioeconomic inequalities to affect lifetime outcomes, with distributional consequences for society at large.

Policy Area

• Housing, Community Development, and Urban Policy

Chair

• Jason Ward, RAND Corporation

Discussants

• Raheem Chaudhry, University of Washington

• Jason Baron, Duke University

Organizer

• Micah Y Baum, University of Michigan

Individual Presentations

• When Opportunity Moves to You: Housing Deregulation and the Distribution of Child Outcomes - Presenting Author: Micah Y Baum, University of Michigan

• Take a Loan Off Fannie (Mae): Student Debt and Mortgage Underwriting Constraints - Presenting Author: Kelcie Ferrara-Gerson, University of Michigan

• Evicted from Opportunity: Labor Market Effects of Housing Loss in High-Productivity Cities - Presenting Author: Brian James Asquith, W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

• Building Segregation: The Long-Run Neighborhood Effects of American Public Housing - Presenting Author: Beau Bressler, Yale University