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Journal Article
Housing affordability: recommendations for new research to guide policy
This article highlights areas where economic research is needed to guide federal policymakers addressing the challenge of improving housing affordability. The author places these research recommendations in the framework of five key issues, reflecting policymakers? need to identify a rationale for government action; to employ a single, clear measure to gauge affordability; to understand the unintended consequences of current housing policies; to ensure that the political environment is considered when developing policy; and to decide whether to use housing finance reform as a means of ...
Working Paper
Affording Degree Completion: An Experimental Study of Completion Grants at Accessible Public Universities
To improve college affordability and graduation rates, universities are increasingly allocating “completion grants” to students who are nearing the finish line but facing financial challenges. Using an experimental design and common program model across 11 broad-access public universities in ten states, we assessed the impact of a completion grants averaging $1,200 distributed among more than 14,000 students. We find that, despite university expectations that most students were near completion, only two-thirds of students eligible to receive a completion grant graduated within the ...
Journal Article
Research on Affordable Rental Housing and Subsidy Expiration
There is an abundance of evidence that rental markets across the country are unaffordable. Studies show that, from 2000 to 2010, there was a rapid decline in rental affordability, with rent increases occurring in the face of stagnant or declining incomes in nearly every metropolitan area and across almost every quintile of the income distribution during that period.
Child Care: Critical to the Economy but Difficult to Access and Afford
The COVID-19 pandemic showed how important child care is for allowing parents to participate in the workforce. Access and affordability remain a challenge.
Working Paper
Supply Constraints Do Not Explain House Price and Quantity Growth Across U.S. Cities
The standard view of housing markets holds that the flexibility of local housing supply—shaped by factors like geography and regulation—strongly affects the response of house prices, house quantities and population to rising housing demand. However, from 2000 to 2020, we find that higher income growth predicts the same growth in house prices, housing quantity, and population regardless of a city’s estimated housing supply elasticity. We find the same pattern when we expand the sample to 1980 to 2020, use different elasticity measures, and when we instrument for local housing demand. ...