ABSTRACT

Millions of households face housing affordability problems as house prices and rents rise faster than incomes. Yet little is known about how high housing expenditures affect well-being. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we examine the relationship between housing cost burden, material hardship, and residential satisfaction after the Great Recession. We find that households with higher housing cost burdens were more likely to experience some form of material hardship, controlling for other variables. The probability of material hardship increased with cost burden for households spending up to 50% of their income on housing. However, households that spend more than half of their income on housing are no more likely to experience material hardship than households who spend around 50%. We find some evidence that families with children trade high housing costs for improvements in housing conditions. The findings provide empirical support for using housing cost burden as a measure of affordability and suggest higher housing cost burdens may contribute to decreased well-being through multiple forms of material hardship but also may have threshold effects.

摘要

由于房价和租金上涨速度快于收入，数百万家庭面临住房负担能力问题。然而，人们对高昂的住房支出对福祉的影响知之甚少。使用收入和计划参与调查的数据，我们研究了大萧条后住房成本负担、物质困难和居住满意度之间的关系。我们发现，在控制其他变量的情况下，住房成本负担较高的家庭更有可能经历某种形式的物质困难。家庭将收入的 50% 用于住房的成本负担增加了物质困难的可能性。然而，将一半以上收入用于住房的家庭遭遇物质困难的可能性并不比支出约 50% 的家庭更大。我们发现一些证据表明，有孩子的家庭以高昂的住房成本换取住房条件的改善。研究结果为使用住房成本负担作为衡量负担能力的指标提供了实证支持，并表明更高的住房成本负担可能会通过多种形式的物质困难导致福祉下降，但也可能具有阈值效应。