Housing affordability is the most prevalent housing problem jeopardizing the well-being of low-income children. In this paper, we attempt to estimate the net effects of the affordability feature of assisted housing on children’s healthy development measured by cognitive achievement, overall health and socioemotional adjustment. Using a quasi-experimental design, we focus on children ages 0–17 using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics address-matched to HUD administrative data, enriched with multiply imputed housing and neighborhood measures from the AHS and linked to census tract measures via geocodes. Methodological innovations include estimating a series of treatment strategies to address the positivity assumption that the comparison group is always income-eligible for assistance and addressing likely crossovers by estimating a series of target trials. We use two methods, Oster’s delta and VanderWeele’s E-value, to test the robustness of results. We find that children who spend part of childhood in assisted housing have greater cognitive achievement and better overall health compared to their unassisted counterparts. Assisted housing also improves children’s socioemotional adjustment indirectly by improving parenting quality, which, in turn, improves child adjustment. Affordability appears to drive results.
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