Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP10746
Authors: Sharon Barnhardt; Erica Field; Rohini Pande
Abstract: A housing lottery in an Indian city provided winning slum dwellers the opportunity to move into improved housing on the city?s periphery. Fourteen years later, relative to lottery losers, winners report improved housing farther from the city center, but no change in family income or human capital. Winners also report increased isolation from family and caste networks and lower access to informal insurance. We observe significant program exit: 34% of winners never moved into the subsidized housing and 32% eventually exited. Our results point to the importance of considering social networks when designing housing programs for the poor.
Keywords: growth; transportation economics; economic development; innovation; mathematical and quantitative methods; public economics; real estate; regional; rural; technological change; urban
JEL Codes: C93; H42; O12; O18; R21
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| high exit rate from program (I21) | insufficient incentives for relocation (J62) |
| geographic relocation (J61) | social capital (Z13) |
| winners living farther from adult children (J19) | fewer reliable contacts for borrowing needs (G21) |
| housing lottery winners (R21) | socioeconomic measures (I32) |
| housing lottery winners (R21) | economic upliftment (O55) |