ABSTRACT

Research on the effects of federal housing assistance programs on children’s outcomes has produced mixed results. Although housing assistance programs provide a rare source of affordable and stable housing for low-income families, there remains concern that living in public housing developments increases children’s risk of poor health. This paper uses a unique survey-administrative linked dataset to examine the effect of living in public housing on children’s risk of health problems, including frequent diarrhea, headaches, skin allergies, asthma, and fair/poor health status. Children living in public housing have more health problems than children who do not live in public housing. However, the analysis develops several comparison groups to demonstrate that the excess health problems reflect unobserved selection into public housing. The main selection adjustment compares children living in public housing to children who enter public housing in the near future. Results indicate that public housing does not increase the risk of child health problems, and it is important to consider selection into public housing on factors that are correlated with health. The effects of public housing may be mixed, but policymakers should not confuse the economic and health challenges of public housing residents for the effects of the program itself.

 抽象的

关于联邦住房援助计划对儿童的影响的研究得出了不同的结果。尽管住房援助计划为低收入家庭提供了稀有的负担得起的稳定住房来源，但人们仍然担心居住在公共住房开发项目中会增加儿童健康状况不佳的风险。本文使用独特的调查-行政关联数据集来研究居住在公共住房对儿童健康问题风险的影响，包括频繁腹泻、头痛、皮肤过敏、哮喘和健康状况一般/较差。居住在公共住房中的儿童比不居住在公共住房中的儿童有更多的健康问题。然而，分析建立了几个比较组，以证明过多的健康问题反映了对公共住房的未被观察到的选择。主要的选择调整是将居住在公屋的儿童与近期进入公屋的儿童进行比较。结果表明，公共住房不会增加儿童健康问题的风险，因此根据与健康相关的因素考虑选择公共住房非常重要。公共住房的影响可能是复杂的，但政策制定者不应将公共住房居民的经济和健康挑战与该计划本身的影响混为一谈。