Do housing regulations affect child development? Evidence and mechanisms

Han Li, Jiangyi Li, Yi Lu and Huihua Xie

Journal of Public Economics, 2023, vol. 227, issue C

Abstract: This study analyzes the effects of housing policies on child development. By exploiting the policy-induced discontinuity in house size in China, we find that favorable housing policies significantly reduce children’s cognitive skills, lessen their beliefs in an internal locus of control, and decrease their self-esteem but have little impact on their physical health or depression symptoms. The heterogeneous analyses show that children at a critical stage of skill formation, girls and children with longer exposure respond more strongly to housing policies. Furthermore, our mechanism decomposition shows that parenting skills play a large role in the effect of housing wealth on child development.

Keywords: Housing policies; Child development; Regression discontinuity design; Cognitive and noncognitive skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 H31 J13 O18 R28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272723001779
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:pubeco:v:227:y:2023:i:c:s0047272723001779

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104995

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().