What are the impacts of living in social housing?

David Prentice and Rosanna Scutella

No 201801, Technical papers from Infrastructure Victoria

Abstract: In this paper we take the first steps to providing parameters for use in the cost benefit analysis of investments in social housing by estimating its effects on outcomes for individual residents. This is done by applying statistical matching methods to the Journeys Home dataset to provide new estimates of the impacts of social housing on employment, education, health, incarceration and homelessness. We find placing an individual, vulnerable to becoming homeless, in social housing means they are less likely, compared with other similar individuals not in social housing, to become homeless. Hence, social housing is providing an important `safety net’ for people vulnerable to homelessness. We also find that in the short run individuals in social housing have similar outcomes in terms of employment, education, physical and mental health, and incarceration to similarly disadvantaged individuals not in social housing. These results are potentially due to strict targeting of individuals into relatively limited available spots in social housing and the averaging across cohort specific effects. The long run impacts, for some cohorts, may differ but analysing this requires longer datasets.

Keywords: Social Housing; Matching Methods; Homelessness; Employment; Education; Health; Incarceration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D61 H42 H54 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-05-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-lab and nep-ure
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