The COVID-19 recession hit the lowest-paid sectors of the economy the hardest, resulting in lower-income Americans losing their jobs and income at higher rates. Therefore, renters are more likely to have been impacted negatively by the economic shocks of the pandemic. While the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act that passed in March 2020 provided one year of easily attainable mortgage forbearance for most homeowners, renters did not receive any form of federally-provided rent relief until the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021, which provided $25 billion in rental assistance through the Emergency Rental Assistance Program to cover current or past due balances. We examine income and savings patterns for renters and mortgages holders during the pandemic and ask: is there evidence that renters needed more assistance than they received? We find evidence that renters indeed needed more of a financial safety net than was available during the pandemic. The renters we analyze are much more affluent than typical renters and even among this population, they were more likely than mortgage holders to have lost their job and suffered large swings in their labor income, including large drops. Even with unusually generous UI benefits and stimulus checks, more than one in five renters experienced a greater than 10 percent drop in their total income. These income swings were more negative relative to the pre-COVID period. Finally, renters not only had lower incomes than mortgage holders, they also had much less of a savings buffer entering the pandemic. While more generous UI benefits and stimulus checks dramatically boosted their savings, they had depleted most of the additional savings by the end of the year, their position relative to mortgage holders did not improve significantly, and nearly one in four renters saw their savings decrease in 2020.
{"title":"Renters vs. Homeowners: Income and Liquid Asset Trends during COVID-19","authors":"Fiona Greig, Chen Zhao, Alexandra Lefevre","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3807563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3807563","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 recession hit the lowest-paid sectors of the economy the hardest, resulting in lower-income Americans losing their jobs and income at higher rates. Therefore, renters are more likely to have been impacted negatively by the economic shocks of the pandemic. While the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act that passed in March 2020 provided one year of easily attainable mortgage forbearance for most homeowners, renters did not receive any form of federally-provided rent relief until the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021, which provided $25 billion in rental assistance through the Emergency Rental Assistance Program to cover current or past due balances. We examine income and savings patterns for renters and mortgages holders during the pandemic and ask: is there evidence that renters needed more assistance than they received? We find evidence that renters indeed needed more of a financial safety net than was available during the pandemic. The renters we analyze are much more affluent than typical renters and even among this population, they were more likely than mortgage holders to have lost their job and suffered large swings in their labor income, including large drops. Even with unusually generous UI benefits and stimulus checks, more than one in five renters experienced a greater than 10 percent drop in their total income. These income swings were more negative relative to the pre-COVID period. Finally, renters not only had lower incomes than mortgage holders, they also had much less of a savings buffer entering the pandemic. While more generous UI benefits and stimulus checks dramatically boosted their savings, they had depleted most of the additional savings by the end of the year, their position relative to mortgage holders did not improve significantly, and nearly one in four renters saw their savings decrease in 2020.","PeriodicalId":10619,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Economy: Social Welfare Policy eJournal","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88093707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article is a desk research that seeks to analyze empirical literature on the impact of social protection programmes (SPP) and attest if there is need for an alternative programme or a change in the structure. SPP dates back from A.D 98 when the Roman Emperor gave free grain to the poorer in his empire (Hammond Mason 2020). Later in 1952 the ILO provided the first instrument for SPP before the UN 1995 World Summit for Social Development where governments agreed to anchor SP systems by the law (United Nations, 1995). SPP were established on motives concerned with preventing, managing and overcoming situations that adversely affect people’s well-being. Social Cash transfers in Malawi for example have led to increase in aggregate demand and the potential to increase GDP, improved labor opportunities, strengthened social networks, improved health and education of Children. However, this research has found that the structure of Social Protection programmes in Malawi needs to be reviewed because of its propensity to trapping people especially women into poverty. The paper proposes the need to extend focus from those unfit-for-work to the vulnerable non-poor. Inclusion of the vulnerable non-poor will prevent them from falling into poverty and also stimulate beneficiaries to graduate from poverty. This will lead to a substantive decrease in the pool of SPP beneficiaries in the long-run.
{"title":"Do Social Cash Transfers Trap Beneficiaries into Poverty? A Remedial Recommendation for Malawi","authors":"Lloyd George Banda","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3801693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3801693","url":null,"abstract":"This article is a desk research that seeks to analyze empirical literature on the impact of social protection programmes (SPP) and attest if there is need for an alternative programme or a change in the structure. SPP dates back from A.D 98 when the Roman Emperor gave free grain to the poorer in his empire (Hammond Mason 2020). Later in 1952 the ILO provided the first instrument for SPP before the UN 1995 World Summit for Social Development where governments agreed to anchor SP systems by the law (United Nations, 1995). SPP were established on motives concerned with preventing, managing and overcoming situations that adversely affect people’s well-being. Social Cash transfers in Malawi for example have led to increase in aggregate demand and the potential to increase GDP, improved labor opportunities, strengthened social networks, improved health and education of Children. However, this research has found that the structure of Social Protection programmes in Malawi needs to be reviewed because of its propensity to trapping people especially women into poverty. The paper proposes the need to extend focus from those unfit-for-work to the vulnerable non-poor. Inclusion of the vulnerable non-poor will prevent them from falling into poverty and also stimulate beneficiaries to graduate from poverty. This will lead to a substantive decrease in the pool of SPP beneficiaries in the long-run.","PeriodicalId":10619,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Economy: Social Welfare Policy eJournal","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73634404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The price index for dwelling rents in Finland have been measured from data that is collected in connection with the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The construction of index series is based on the base strategy with log-Laspeyres as the index number formula. Some problems have emerged: First, the data did not allow detailed regional classification. Second, the purpose of data collection was mainly for labour markets survey, not for dwelling rents (i.e. weighting into target population). Third, the selection of proper index number formula had not been adequately analyzed.
In this study we analyze these three questions by new monthly collected data having over 400 000 observations from whole country quite representatively. The data includes dwelling rents from the Social Insurance Institution's register of housing allowances and from two major private rental housing companies. It includes government-subsidized and non-subsidized dwellings.
{"title":"Price Index for Dwelling Rents in Finland","authors":"Yrjö Vartia, Antti Suoperä, J. Vuorio","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3801559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3801559","url":null,"abstract":"The price index for dwelling rents in Finland have been measured from data that is collected in connection with the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The construction of index series is based on the base strategy with log-Laspeyres as the index number formula. Some problems have emerged: First, the data did not allow detailed regional classification. Second, the purpose of data collection was mainly for labour markets survey, not for dwelling rents (i.e. weighting into target population). Third, the selection of proper index number formula had not been adequately analyzed. <br><br>In this study we analyze these three questions by new monthly collected data having over 400 000 observations from whole country quite representatively. The data includes dwelling rents from the Social Insurance Institution's register of housing allowances and from two major private rental housing companies. It includes government-subsidized and non-subsidized dwellings. <br>","PeriodicalId":10619,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Economy: Social Welfare Policy eJournal","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80874613","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates heterogeneity in residential property yields using rental and sale listings from the largest German internet real estate platform. Equipped with property-level rent-to-price ratios obtained via matching properties for sale and for rent, we show that they strongly co-move with local factors, such as population age structure, industry structure, housing supply rigidities, and the liquidity and size of the housing market. Regional differences are particularly pronounced between globally relevant cities and other areas. However, a large fraction of the variation of rent-to-price ratios can be explained neither by local factors nor by an extensive array of property-specific observable features, pointing to the crucial role of idiosyncratic factors and within-city aggregation economies. We then create a pseudo-panel to examine the time-series dimension of house prices and show that the ability of expectations about discount and rent growth rates impounded in rent-to-price ratios to predict return and rent growth is statistically significant but of limited economic magnitude.
{"title":"Housing Yields","authors":"Stefano Colonnello, Roberto Marfè, Qizhou Xiong","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3786959","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3786959","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates heterogeneity in residential property yields using rental and sale listings from the largest German internet real estate platform. Equipped with property-level rent-to-price ratios obtained via matching properties for sale and for rent, we show that they strongly co-move with local factors, such as population age structure, industry structure, housing supply rigidities, and the liquidity and size of the housing market. Regional differences are particularly pronounced between globally relevant cities and other areas. However, a large fraction of the variation of rent-to-price ratios can be explained neither by local factors nor by an extensive array of property-specific observable features, pointing to the crucial role of idiosyncratic factors and within-city aggregation economies. We then create a pseudo-panel to examine the time-series dimension of house prices and show that the ability of expectations about discount and rent growth rates impounded in rent-to-price ratios to predict return and rent growth is statistically significant but of limited economic magnitude.","PeriodicalId":10619,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Economy: Social Welfare Policy eJournal","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79557965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
All families may be created equal, so to speak. But differences between families in terms of economic wealth, resource networks, and access to cultural capital are both severe and stark. A large part of what shapes this scenery of economic possibility is the legal framework of wealth transfer. Wealth travels through generations and sticks, crystallizing in predictable places and shapes, thereby embedding complex forms of inequality within and between families. The family trust, in particular, is a mode of transfer that facilitates wealth preservation as well as wealth inequality. Family trusts are tailored to convey and defend complex patrimonies in ways that no other form of wealth transfer can do. Wills, the other most common form of wealth transfer, do not have the same functionality and can only effectuate a one-time transfer, making it difficult to exert long-term control over beneficiaries.
This Article’s primary goal is to excavate the myriad ways in which the family trust is a driver of inequality by explaining the family trust’s plasticity and ability to bend to the needs of high-wealth families. The Article accomplishes this by demonstrating how the family trust facilitates not only wealth inequality but also social and cultural inequality. These explorations into complex inequality and its furtherance by the family trust are useful because they help us better appreciate the significant role that family trusts play in the evolving story of class, gender, and race privilege in the United States. Attending to the practices and possibilities of the family trust also leads us to a better understanding of how trust reform might begin to dislocate the family trust from its central positioning within the legal architecture of inequality. Ultimately, the family trust does not have to be coextensive with elite family advantage; it can be reimagined to work on behalf of communities that are economically vulnerable and historically dispossessed.
{"title":"Inheriting Privilege","authors":"A. Tait","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3786351","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3786351","url":null,"abstract":"All families may be created equal, so to speak. But differences between families in terms of economic wealth, resource networks, and access to cultural capital are both severe and stark. A large part of what shapes this scenery of economic possibility is the legal framework of wealth transfer. Wealth travels through generations and sticks, crystallizing in predictable places and shapes, thereby embedding complex forms of inequality within and between families. The family trust, in particular, is a mode of transfer that facilitates wealth preservation as well as wealth inequality. Family trusts are tailored to convey and defend complex patrimonies in ways that no other form of wealth transfer can do. Wills, the other most common form of wealth transfer, do not have the same functionality and can only effectuate a one-time transfer, making it difficult to exert long-term control over beneficiaries. <br><br>This Article’s primary goal is to excavate the myriad ways in which the family trust is a driver of inequality by explaining the family trust’s plasticity and ability to bend to the needs of high-wealth families. The Article accomplishes this by demonstrating how the family trust facilitates not only wealth inequality but also social and cultural inequality. These explorations into complex inequality and its furtherance by the family trust are useful because they help us better appreciate the significant role that family trusts play in the evolving story of class, gender, and race privilege in the United States. Attending to the practices and possibilities of the family trust also leads us to a better understanding of how trust reform might begin to dislocate the family trust from its central positioning within the legal architecture of inequality. Ultimately, the family trust does not have to be coextensive with elite family advantage; it can be reimagined to work on behalf of communities that are economically vulnerable and historically dispossessed.","PeriodicalId":10619,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Economy: Social Welfare Policy eJournal","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87590160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tax-qualified vehicles helped U.S. private-sector workers accumulate $25Tr in retirement assets. An often-overlooked important institutional feature shaping decumulations from these retirement plans is the “Required Minimum Distribution” (RMD) regulation, requiring retirees to withdraw a minimum fraction from their retirement accounts or pay excise taxes on withdrawal shortfalls. Our calibrated lifecycle model measures the impact of RMD rules on financial behavior of heterogeneous households during their worklives and retirement. We show that proposed reforms to delay or eliminate the RMD rules should have little effects on consumption profiles but more impact on withdrawals and tax payments for households with bequest motives. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
{"title":"Do Required Minimum Distribution 401(K) Rules Matter, and for Whom? Insights from a Lifecycle Model","authors":"Vanya Horneff, R. Maurer, O. Mitchell","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3789278","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3789278","url":null,"abstract":"Tax-qualified vehicles helped U.S. private-sector workers accumulate $25Tr in retirement assets. An often-overlooked important institutional feature shaping decumulations from these retirement plans is the “Required Minimum Distribution” (RMD) regulation, requiring retirees to withdraw a minimum fraction from their retirement accounts or pay excise taxes on withdrawal shortfalls. Our calibrated lifecycle model measures the impact of RMD rules on financial behavior of heterogeneous households during their worklives and retirement. We show that proposed reforms to delay or eliminate the RMD rules should have little effects on consumption profiles but more impact on withdrawals and tax payments for households with bequest motives. \u0000 \u0000Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.","PeriodicalId":10619,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Economy: Social Welfare Policy eJournal","volume":"145 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79719803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Americans attempting to save for retirement face a maze of account options, each with their own unique tax consequences. Unfortunately, this maze also limits access to tax-advantaged retirement savings and takes money out of savers’ pockets. In this article, we recommend entirely eliminating traditional and Roth 401(k) accounts after a date to be specified by Congress. To compensate for dollars that workers (and their employers, through matching contributions) formerly contributed to these accounts, we propose raising the current contribution limits to traditional and Roth Individual Retirement Accounts (“IRAs”) proportionately. We argue that this reform would solve numerous inefficiencies and inequities in the current 401(k) system — it would effectively expand lower- and middle-class workers’ access to tax-advantaged retirement savings. In Part II we discuss how our proposal would solve seven severe problems plaguing the 401(k); in Part III we explain the options for transitioning from the current regime to an all-IRA regime; in Part IV we address some preliminary objections to our proposal.
{"title":"Retiring the 401(k): A New Framework for Retirement Savings","authors":"Benjamin C Silver, Michael Slomovics","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3762653","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3762653","url":null,"abstract":"Americans attempting to save for retirement face a maze of account options, each with their own unique tax consequences. Unfortunately, this maze also limits access to tax-advantaged retirement savings and takes money out of savers’ pockets. In this article, we recommend entirely eliminating traditional and Roth 401(k) accounts after a date to be specified by Congress. To compensate for dollars that workers (and their employers, through matching contributions) formerly contributed to these accounts, we propose raising the current contribution limits to traditional and Roth Individual Retirement Accounts (“IRAs”) proportionately. We argue that this reform would solve numerous inefficiencies and inequities in the current 401(k) system — it would effectively expand lower- and middle-class workers’ access to tax-advantaged retirement savings. In Part II we discuss how our proposal would solve seven severe problems plaguing the 401(k); in Part III we explain the options for transitioning from the current regime to an all-IRA regime; in Part IV we address some preliminary objections to our proposal.","PeriodicalId":10619,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Economy: Social Welfare Policy eJournal","volume":"185 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87370827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.15855/SWP.2021.48.1.63
Jaehyun Nam, RaeHyuck Lee
{"title":"The Influence of COVID-19 Economic Impact Payment on Household Consumption in South Korea - Focusing on Comparison by Income Classes -","authors":"Jaehyun Nam, RaeHyuck Lee","doi":"10.15855/SWP.2021.48.1.63","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15855/SWP.2021.48.1.63","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":10619,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Economy: Social Welfare Policy eJournal","volume":"28 1","pages":"63-95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82611950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although a meaningful percentage of firms are created out of unemployment and current active labor market policies in Europe often subsidize unemployed individuals to start their own businesses, little is known about the role of unemployment insurance (UI) generosity for selfemployment. By using Spanish administrative data including previously unavailable information on self-employment, we exploit a reform-driven exogenous cut in UI benefits to identify its causal effect on general employment and decompose it into the effects on self-employment and re-employment. Exploiting a discontinuity in the UI benefit schedule which changed as a result of the 2012 Spanish labor market reform, we estimate the causal reform effects on the extensive margin of (self-)employment and on unemployment duration. We find heterogeneous effects on the extensive margin: while the job-finding rate increases, the startup rate decreases. Over different time horizons, the negative effect on self-employment (35-50%) outweighs the positive effect on employment (5-33%). Our UI benefit duration elasticity estimates indicate that reduced UI benefits extend unemployment duration for individuals transitioning into self-employment but shorten unemployment for individuals finding re-employment. Due to the reform's unintended consequences for self-employment, its general employment effect is much smaller than claimed by analyses that focus only on employment.
{"title":"The Effect of Unemployment Insurance Benefits on (Self-)Employment: Two Sides of the Same Coin?","authors":"Josef Hollmayr, Jan Kuckuck","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3249939","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3249939","url":null,"abstract":"Although a meaningful percentage of firms are created out of unemployment and current active labor market policies in Europe often subsidize unemployed individuals to start their own businesses, little is known about the role of unemployment insurance (UI) generosity for selfemployment. By using Spanish administrative data including previously unavailable information on self-employment, we exploit a reform-driven exogenous cut in UI benefits to identify its causal effect on general employment and decompose it into the effects on self-employment and re-employment. Exploiting a discontinuity in the UI benefit schedule which changed as a result of the 2012 Spanish labor market reform, we estimate the causal reform effects on the extensive margin of (self-)employment and on unemployment duration. We find heterogeneous effects on the extensive margin: while the job-finding rate increases, the startup rate decreases. Over different time horizons, the negative effect on self-employment (35-50%) outweighs the positive effect on employment (5-33%). Our UI benefit duration elasticity estimates indicate that reduced UI benefits extend unemployment duration for individuals transitioning into self-employment but shorten unemployment for individuals finding re-employment. Due to the reform's unintended consequences for self-employment, its general employment effect is much smaller than claimed by analyses that focus only on employment.","PeriodicalId":10619,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Economy: Social Welfare Policy eJournal","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77857873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Historic districts preserve the heritage of designated areas and tend to attract tourism income. However, these districts also come with specific restrictions and increased housing prices that could result in segregation. We study how two historic district programs impact residential segregation in Denver. We find that home buyers are more likely to be White within historic districts, but that the official designation has no effect on this probability. Similarly, when examining seller-to-buyer housing transactions, we find that most transactions flow from White sellers to White buyers, regardless of the official designation. Thus, while historic districts tend to be more segregated than their surrounding areas, the legal restrictions and housing premium that come with historic designations do not seem to amplify this existing problem.
{"title":"Are Historic Districts A Backdoor for Segregation? Yes and No","authors":"Jamie Bologna Pavlik, Yang Zhou","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3733105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3733105","url":null,"abstract":"Historic districts preserve the heritage of designated areas and tend to attract tourism income. However, these districts also come with specific restrictions and increased housing prices that could result in segregation. We study how two historic district programs impact residential segregation in Denver. We find that home buyers are more likely to be White within historic districts, but that the official designation has no effect on this probability. Similarly, when examining seller-to-buyer housing transactions, we find that most transactions flow from White sellers to White buyers, regardless of the official designation. Thus, while historic districts tend to be more segregated than their surrounding areas, the legal restrictions and housing premium that come with historic designations do not seem to amplify this existing problem.","PeriodicalId":10619,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Economy: Social Welfare Policy eJournal","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81683329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}