Project: THE EFFECTS OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING ON CHILDREN’S WELL-BEING: PHASE TWO

Sponsor: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Status: Complete
IPS Staff: Sandra J. Newman, Scott Holupka, Marcella Sapun, and Amy Robie

Purpose and Approach
Housing affordability is currently viewed as the most significant housing challenge. Over the last two decades, the housing component of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) grew 35 percent faster than the general CPI, and the fraction of income devoted to rent increased from 34 percent to 40 percent for all renter households and from 68 percent to 77 percent for poor households. According to the 2006 State of the Nation’s Housing report, nearly one-quarter of renter households paid more than 50 percent of their incomes for rent in 2004. As noted in the synopsis of the first phase of this project (see page 16), housing affordability problems could have deleterious effects on children’s well-being by reducing the resources the family can invest in their children, or by increasing the stress on parents. On the other hand, places with higher-priced housing tend to be those with robust economies, better schools, lower crime rates, and more attractive environments. Perhaps when families pay more to live in such places, children benefit. In this second phase of the study, we extend our examination of the association between housing affordability and children’s outcomes by analyzing a second national longitudinal survey database, in part, to conduct parallel analyses to see if results from the first phase are replicated, and, in part, to extend the current analyses in important ways. We are using the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth in this analysis. These data include an ongoing survey of those born between 1957-1964 (NLSY79) and biennial longitudinal surveys of the offspring of women in the ongoing survey (NLSY-C and NLSY-YA).

Results and Publications
Forthcoming.