Subsidized Housing and Household Structure

Yana Kucheva, Stanford University

My paper examines an understudied aspect of the relationship between government subsidies and household structure, namely how entering subsidized housing, staying in subsidized housing and exiting into the private housing market interacts with the choices that subsidy recipients make regarding with whom to live. I use a multi-state life table, incorporating the monthly longitudinal histories of all individuals in the Survey of Income and Program Participation from 1990 through 2008. My results show that entries into subsidized housing are accompanied by changes in household arrangements that reduce the number of adults in households. On the other hand, individuals tend to exit subsidized housing in the same household arrangement as they were in subsidized housing. My analysis also suggests that the biggest changes in the subsidized program would occur with changes in the rates of entry into subsidized housing rather than the rates of exit from subsidized housing.