The Impact of the National Housing Program on Residential Segregation in Costa Rica

Abstract

Residential socio-economic segregation in Costa Rica had an overall decreasing trend between 1973 and 2011 because of a sustained reduction in the amount of lower income households. However, in 1986, the national housing program was reformed, including a ten-fold increase in housing supply (292 thousand subsidies allocated in 1987-2011, in a country with 1.36 million housing units). The pattern of these subsidies was hypothesized to increase residential segregation in Costa Rica. Segregation indices were estimated per municipality for lower and higher income groups. The impact of social housing subsidies on segregation levels was quantified using a fixed effects model with standard errors corrected for spatial dependence. Social housing supply was found to have historically reduced residential segregation; however, the 1986 reforms created a system that followed the patterns of real estate markets, in turn reducing much of the system’s mitigation effect on residential segregation.

Variedad urbana en contextos de viviendas de interés social en Costa Rica

“…Estudios previos han centrado sus esfuerzos en analizar como el desarrollo de VIS se asocia a patrones de segregación residencial en Costa Rica, y han encontrado que la política de vivienda de interés social ha influido en el incremento de la segregación residencial y social (De la Espriella, 2009;Pérez-Molina, 2023;Pujol-Mesalles et al, 2014). Pérez-Molina (2023) encontró en su estudio que antes de la reforma al programa de VIS en 1986 la construcción de VIS había contribuido a reducir la segregación, patrones que se invierten después de dicha reforma, siguiendo las dinámicas de mercado y de movilidad residencial.…”