Childhood Housing and Adult Outcomes: A Between-Siblings Analysis of Housing Vouchers and Public Housing

Abstract

We create a national-level longitudinal dataset to analyze how children’s participation in public and voucher-assisted housing affects age-26 earnings and adult incarceration. Naïve OLS estimates suggest that returns to subsidized housing participation are negative, but that relationship is driven by household selection into assisted housing. Household fixed effects estimates indicate that additional years of public housing increase earnings by 6.2 percent for females and 6.1 percent for males, while voucher-assisted housing increases earnings by 4.8 percent for females and 2.7 percent for males. Childhood participation in assisted housing also reduces the likelihood of adult incarceration for all household race/ethnicity groups. (JEL I38, J13, J31, K42, R38)