Offsetting the Earnings Disincentive in Public Housing: Evidence from a Behaviorally Informed Field Intervention

Holly Dykstra and Fernández-Guerrico, Sofia

No 21316, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Income-based rents in public housing create an earnings disincentive. We collaborate with a public housing authority to design a behaviorally informed program that returns part of the rent induced by higher earnings to residents. Importantly, the program automatically enrolled households and was explicitly designed to make the increased payoff to working salient. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we estimate that annual household-head earnings rise 17% ($1,370/year) and public assistance falls 7.5%, with impacts on both intensive and extensive margins. These results provide evidence that an in-work benefit designed for salience can offset the earnings disincentive and affect follow-through labor market behavior.

Keywords: Labor supply; in-work benefits; Salience; public housing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 I38 J22 R38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21316 (application/pdf)

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:cpr:ceprdp:21316

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21316

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().