Housing Assistance and Employment: How Far‐Reaching Are the Effects of Rental Subsidies?

Abstract

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Subsidized Housing and Household Hardship Among Low‐Income Single‐Mother Households

“…Yet it is possible that tenant‐based assistance is associated with other aspects of well‐being that are omitted from this study (see, e.g., Grigsby & Bourassa, 2003). For example, there is some evidence linking increased housing stability, which we find to be positively associated with tenant‐based assistance, to increases in employment (Heintze et al, 2006; Ong, 1998; Sard & Lubell, 2000). Future research should explore associations between each type of housing assistance and a wider range of hardship and well‐being related outcomes.…”

“…Thus, although housing assistance, in general, should be associated with increased housing stability, it is unclear which type of benefit should have a larger effect. Empirically, Heintze et al (2006) find that housing assistance is positively associated with length of stay in a unit and that this association does not differ for households with unit‐ and tenant‐based subsidies.…”

“…The extent to which housing instability and residential crowding constitute housing‐related hardship may be less self‐evident. We posit that housing instability reflects hardship in that frequent residential moves are linked to adverse developmental outcomes for children (Mulroy & Ewalt, 1996; Sard & Lubell, 2000; Sharfstein & Sandel, 1998) and that stable housing is associated with increased opportunities for adults to gain and maintain employment (Heintze, Berger, Naidich, & Meyers, 2006; Ong, 1998; Sard & Lubell). We view residential crowding as a form of hardship because crowded living arrangements are associated with adverse outcomes vis‐à‐vis parenting quality, family interactions and functioning, and child behavior (Evans, 2006).…”

Instrumental Variable Estimation in Social Work Research: A Technique for Estimating Causal Effects in Nonrandomized Settings

“…Although IVE has become central to econometrics, IVE has not received much attention in social work research (for exceptions, see Bennett, Stoops, Call, & Flett, 2007;Berger, Paxson, & Waldfogel, 2009;Heintze, Berger, Naidich, & Meyers, 2006;Svare, Jay, Bruce, Freisthler, & Miller, 2007). The intuition behind IVE is that correlative analyses can be used in conjunction with another variablereferred to as an instrument, or instrumental variable (usually abbreviated as IV)-to artificially create the same conditions as random assignment and isolate the causal effect of X on Y (Morgan & Winship, 2007).…”

“…These research areas include estimating income effects on child development (Berger, Paxson, et al, 2009); the impact of batterer interventions on re-arrest (Bennett et al, 2007); housing effects on employment (Heintze et al, 2006); and problems relating to disentangling the relationship between substance abuse and mental illness on client functioning. As an example, Bennett et al (2007) investigated the relationship between participation in batterer intervention programs and rearrest for incidents of domestic violence.…”