Housing assistance and children’s educational attainment: a longitudinal study

Existing research on the effects of housing assistance on high school completion is limited and the pathways between such assistance and high school completion have not been fully explored. The current study uses 39 years of national longitudinal survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the PSID’s Assisted Housing Database, and census tract data from the Longitudinal Tract Database to better understand, first, the association between housing assistance and high school completion and, second, the pathways through which this association may operate. All analyses examine both the effects of any housing assistance and these effects by housing assistance type (public housing and vouchers). Pathways analyzed include neighborhood disadvantage, residential stability, housing cost burden, and residential crowding. The current study also explores whether the timing and duration of housing assistance receipt inform the relationship between housing assistance and high school completion. Because of the longitudinal structure of the data, pathways can be examined using both random and fixed effects models, allowing for comparisons to be made both between and within children. Results indicate that receiving a voucher at any point during childhood is associated with an increased likelihood of completing high school compared to not receiving any housing assistance. Children who receive a voucher have access to neighborhoods with similar levels of disadvantage as other low-income children whose families do not have housing assistance; they also are less likely to experience residential crowding or housing cost burdens. Children living in public housing reside in more disadvantaged neighborhoods than children without housing assistance but experience increased residential stability and reduced housing cost burden and crowding. Findings suggest that housing vouchers may be important tools for increasing low-income children’s probability of completing high school. Drawing on existing literature, vouchers that are targeted for use in low-poverty neighborhoods and to families with young children may be particularly effective for improving child and family well-being. Because neighborhood disadvantage was the only pathway in which vouchers outperformed public housing, investments in neighborhoods in which public housing is located may also improve children’s educational attainment.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Sarah Gol