A lack of affordable housing is a pressing issue for many low-income American families and can lead to eviction from their homes. Housing assistance programs to address this problem include public housing and other assistance, including vouchers, through which a government agency offsets the cost of private market housing. This paper assesses whether the receipt of either category of assistance reduces the probability that a family will be evicted from their home in the subsequent six years. Because no randomized trial has assessed these effects, we use observational data and formalize the conditions under which a causal interpretation is warranted. Families living in public housing experience less eviction conditional on pre-treatment variables. We argue that this evidence points toward a causal conclusion that assistance, particularly public housing, protects families from eviction.

中文翻译：

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政府援助保护低收入家庭免遭驱逐


缺乏经济适用房是许多低收入美国家庭面临的紧迫问题，并可能导致被驱逐。解决这一问题的住房援助计划包括公共住房和其他援助，包括代金券，政府机构可以通过代金券抵消私人市场住房的成本。本文评估了接受任一类别的援助是否会降低一个家庭在未来六年内被逐出家园的可能性。由于没有随机试验评估这些影响，因此我们使用观察数据并正式确定因果解释的条件。根据治疗前的变量，居住在公共住房中的家庭遭受驱逐的情况较少。我们认为，这一证据表明了一个因果结论：援助，特别是公共住房，可以保护家庭免遭驱逐。