Premium
Homeownership and Child Welfare
Author(s) -
Barker David,
Miller Eric
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
real estate economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.064
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1540-6229
pISSN - 1080-8620
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-6229.2009.00243.x
Subject(s) - subsidy , welfare , economics , government (linguistics) , national longitudinal surveys , demographic economics , longitudinal study , longitudinal data , panel data , panel study of income dynamics , labour economics , public economics , econometrics , sociology , medicine , demography , market economy , linguistics , philosophy , pathology
Recent studies have concluded that homeownership is beneficial to children. This result is important because it is used to justify large government subsidies that encourage homeownership. We reexamine the results of two of the most prominent of these studies using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Public Use Microsample, and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data. We extend this research by controlling for residential mobility, wealth, dwelling type and vehicle ownership, as well as by using a “differences in differences” methodology to deal with possible treatment effects bias. We find that the beneficial effects of homeownership previously measured are substantially reduced or eliminated by controlling for these factors. We confirm these results using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.