Whether government transfer programs increase the human capital of low-income children is a question of first-order policy importance. Such policies might help poor children if their parents are credit constrained, and so under-invest in their human capital. But it is also possible that whatever...

In 2012, HUD commissioned a national random assignment evaluation of the Family-Self Sufficiency (FSS) program's impacts on labor market and other quality of life outcomes for households receiving Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs). The FSS program has two key components: i) funding for Public...

Source of income (SOI) housing policies prohibit discrimination against prospective renters on the basis of the source of income they report on rental applications. Such policies, which have been implemented in 20 states and more than 100 local jurisdictions as of 2021, are primarily intended to...

This paper provides new evidence on the long-term impacts of neighborhood environment on low-income credit decisions by analyzing financial outcomes and borrowing decisions of participants of the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment. The MTO experiment was a unique, large-scale experiment that...

Researchers and policy-makers have explored the possibility of restricting the use of housing vouchers to neighborhoods that may positively affect the outcomes of children. Using the framework of a dynamic model of optimal location choice, we estimate preferences over neighborhoods of likely...

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration assigned housing vouchers via random lottery to public housing residents in five cities. We use the exogenous variation in residential locations generated by MTO to estimate neighborhood effects on youth crime and delinquency. The offer to relocate...

There has been a substantial shift from public housing to voucher-based housing assistance over the past decade, largely in response to the rising cost of public housing and the high rates of crime, unemployment and school failure among public housing residents. Despite this shift, there is...