Who Moves Out of Social Housing? The Effect of Rent Control on Housing Tenure Choice

Mark A. C. Kattenberg () and Wolter H. J. Hassink ()
Additional contact information
Mark A. C. Kattenberg: Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis
Wolter H. J. Hassink: Utrecht University School of Economics (U.S.E.) and IZA

De Economist, 2017, vol. 165, issue 1, No 3, 43-66

Abstract: Abstract Rent control provides substantial in-kind benefits to tenants of social housing. In the Netherlands these benefits equal almost 40% of the market rent on average. We show that rent control benefits for the 10% tenants with highest income are 5% points higher than the benefits for the 10% with lowest incomes. Next we provide evidence that rent control influences the housing tenure choice decision. We find that on average rent control reduces transitions within the social housing sector, but not transitions from the social housing sector. Only the 20% tenants with highest incomes postpone moves out of social housing in response to rent control. This suggests that the inequitable distribution of rent control benefits is prolonged by the reduction in transition rates out of social housing. It also suggests that recent policy in the Netherlands that reduces rent control benefits for high income households can increase the mobility of those affected.

Keywords: Rent control; Tenure choice; Household mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D45 L51 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10645-016-9286-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:decono:v:165:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s10645-016-9286-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10645/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10645-016-9286-z

Access Statistics for this article

De Economist is currently edited by Rob Alessie, Bas ter Weel, Casper van Ewijk, Jan C. van Ours and Frank de Jong

More articles in De Economist from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().