Housing Subsidies for Refugees: Experimental Evidence on Life Outcomes and Social Integration in Jordan

Abdulrazzak Tamim, Emma C. Smith, Bailey Palmer, Edward Miguel, Samuel Leone, Sandra Rozo and Sarah Stillman

No 33408, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Refugees require assistance for basic needs like housing but local host communities may feel excluded from that assistance, potentially affecting community relations. This study experimentally evaluates the effect of a housing assistance program for Syrian refugees in Jordan on both the recipients and their neighbors. The program offered full rental subsidies and landlord incentives for housing improvements, but saw only moderate uptake, in part due to landlord reluctance. The program improved short-run housing quality and lowered housing expenditures, but did not yield sustained economic benefits, partly due to redistribution of aid. The program unexpectedly led to a deterioration in child socio-emotional well-being, and also strained relations between Jordanian neighbors and refugees. In all, housing subsidies had limited measurable benefits for refugee well-being while worsening social cohesion, highlighting the possible need for alternative forms of aid.

JEL-codes: D22 J61 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara and nep-lab
Note: DEV POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33408.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Housing Subsidies for Refugees: Experimental Evidence on Life Outcomes and Social Integration in Jordan (2025)
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:nbr:nberwo:33408

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33408
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().