Background: Federal policy has increasingly sought to build financial capability, earnings, and assets of subsidized housing recipients. Objective: We conduct a benefit–cost analysis of the Denver Housing Authority’s (DHA) innovative Home Ownership Program (HOP), which incentivizes participants to increase earnings, build wealth, and purchase homes. Research design, subjects, and measures: In assessing HOP participant benefits (earnings, home-buying, and positive exits from DHA), we use parameter estimates from quasi-experimental methods (i.e., propensity score matching) that permit drawing causal inferences of program impacts. Impact estimates are robust to alternate model specification and mostly insensitive to omitted variable bias found in the social sciences. We deploy a comprehensive accounting framework, distinguishing benefits and costs accruing to program participants, nonparticipants (other citizens, taxpayers, and governments), and society as a whole. We use Monte Carlo simulation techniques to approximate distributions of benefit and cost parameters, thereby ascertaining how reliably participation in HOP yielded net benefits compared to if families had continued to receive housing assistance during the same period. Results: We estimate a net social benefit from HOP of US$6,015 per participant. The simulated standard deviation was only a third of this value and 99.9% of simulations returned positive net social benefits. Conclusion: We conclude with a high degree of statistical confidence that HOP produced substantial net benefits to society as a whole, program participants, and nonparticipants alike. HOP offers strong potential for poverty alleviation among housing subsidy recipients and should be replicated.

中文翻译：

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自给自足和房屋所有权创新计划的收益成本分析。

背景：联邦政策越来越寻求建立财政能力，收入和受补贴住房接受者的资产。目标：我们对丹佛住房管理局（DHA）的创新居者有其屋计划（HOP）进行了收益成本分析，该计划激励参与者增加收入，积累财富和购买房屋。研究设计，主题和度量：在评估HOP参与者的利益（收益，购房和DHA的正向退出）时，我们使用准实验方法（即倾向得分匹配）中的参数估计值，从而得出程序的因果推论影响。影响估计对于替代模型规范具有鲁棒性，并且对社会科学中发现的遗漏变量偏差不敏感。我们部署了一个全面的会计框架，区分计划参与者，非参与者（其他公民，纳税人和政府）以及整个社会的收益和成本。我们使用蒙特卡洛模拟技术来估算收益和成本参数的分布，从而确定与家庭在同一时期内是否继续获得住房援助相比，参与HOP产生净收益的可靠性如何。结果：我们估计每位参与者从HOP中获得的净社会收益为6,015美元。模拟的标准偏差仅为该值的三分之一，并且99.9％的模拟返回了正的净社会收益。结论：我们以高度的统计信心得出结论，即HOP为整个社会，计划参与者和非参与者都产生了可观的净收益。