Housing and child development

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Abstract

This article presents a critical review of recent research on the role of housing in children’s development, including physical health; social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes; and schooling, achievement, and economic attainment. We focus on six features of housing that are central to housing policy and have generally received the most research attention: (1) physical housing quality; (2) crowding; (3) residential mobility; (4) homeownership; (5) subsidized housing; and (6) unaffordability. The strongest evidence is provided for the deleterious associations between environmental toxins/hazards and crowding with children’s health, and for residential mobility with children’s short-term academic, social and emotional problems. The findings on assisted housing are mixed, and homeownership and affordability are not linked to children’s outcomes. More methodologically rigorous and conceptually focused research is needed. Despite fundamental knowledge gaps, the results have implications for housing policies focused on homeownership, subsidies and land use regulations.

Introduction

The recent foreclosure crisis has increased attention on housing policy, at least in part because housing problems, which used to be confined to low-income families, have reached up into the middle-class. Yet housing has always been, and remains, a particular challenge to many low-income families. In 2007, prior to the recent crisis, over half (56%) of households with children (i.e., 13 million children) in the lowest income quartile lived in families that spent more than half their income on housing (which is generally considered a severe financial burden), compared with only 17% of those in the second quartile, 7% in the third, and a mere 2% in the top quartile (Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2009). Residential mobility rates also vary greatly by income, with 23% of those below poverty moving within the last year compared with 10% of those at, or above, 150% of poverty (U.S. Census Bureau. 2009). And although physically inadequate housing has become increasingly rare in the United States, an estimated 13% of poor households with children live in such conditions compared with only 4% of those above poverty (Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2009). It is plausible that the constrained housing choices confronting low-income families compound the developmental challenges already facing their children because of their poor economic status (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997, Brooks Gunn & Duncan, 1997). Thus, improving the housing conditions of low-income families could be a productive policy approach for promoting child well-being.

Unless we know whether and how housing conditions are associated with children's outcomes, policy efforts directed at altering the housing circumstances of families, particularly low-income families, may be in vain. To address this concern, our paper presents a review of recent research on the role of housing in children's development, including physical health; social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes; and schooling, achievement, and economic attainment. We focus on six features of housing that are central to housing policy and have generally received the most research attention: (1) physical housing quality; (2) crowding; (3) residential mobility; (4) homeownership; (5) subsidized housing; and (6) unaffordability. We deliberately exclude from our review other features of the full “housing bundle,” such as attributes of the neighborhood surrounding the dwelling, the characteristics of neighbors, and the amenities and services available in the community, because our concern is primarily with the housing unit itself.1

We begin with a brief history of housing policy and its links to human development. This is followed by a discussion of current housing policies for low-income families. Next, we describe our conceptual framework for understanding how housing potentially influences children's development, followed by a brief description of our methodology. Then we present the crux of the paper—a literature review in which we distill both the features of housing that have demonstrated consistent associations with children's development and the specific outcomes examined. The final section summarizes the findings and provides directions for future research and policy recommendations.

Section snippets

Historical seeds of the link between housing and human development2

Although rarely acknowledged, one motivation for government intervention in the housing sector is the belief that decent and affordable housing will yield social benefits, such as better health and greater educational attainment, for both residents–including children–and society at large. The notion that decent housing will improve residents' lives emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when teams of workers lived in squalid shacks in growing industrial cities, and inner-city slums

Current housing policies for low-income families

Unlike other safety net programs such as food stamps and Medicaid, housing assistance for the poor is not an entitlement. As a result, only about one-quarter of income-eligible households receive any form of housing assistance (US Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2005, Fischer & Sard, 2005).3 Waiting

Theoretical perspectives on housing and child development

Housing has received growing attention from social scientists as a potentially important context for children's health and development (Evans, 2006, Newman, 2008, Northridge & Sclar, 2002, Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Much of the child development literature on the home environment has highlighted the objects, interactions, and experiences that are available to the child in the home (Bradley, 2002, Gottfried, 1984, Hart & Risley, 1995, Lareau, 2003), rather than features of the housing unit

Methodology

This literature review on the influences of housing on children's development focuses on research published in the last 25 years, though we reference earlier landmark studies. Studies included in the review were identified with the aid of a large number of search engines. These include: PsychINFO; PsycARTICLES; Psychological Index; ERIC; Academic Search Premier (which contains EconLit and International political science abstracts); Wilson Web (which contains Social Sciences Full Text); CSA

Housing quality

A broad literature exists on the association between the physical adequacy and safety of the dwelling unit and child health and health-related outcomes and, to a much lesser extent, developmental outcomes such as achievement and social and emotional well-being (Krieger & Higgins 2002). With the exception of several intervention programs, many of which are relatively small (e.g., Brown et al., 2001, Lanphear et al., 1999, Lyons et al., 2007), the evidence for links between housing quality and

Housing crowding

A large majority of the research on crowded housing conditions centers on adults rather than children (Evans, 2003, Newman, 2008). The research base on crowding and children's development, while scant, generally accounts for family background characteristics that likely co-occur with crowding, such as family socioeconomic conditions (e.g., Baker, D., Taylor, H., Henderson, J., & The ALSPAC Study Team, 1998, Conley, 2001). This work is exclusively non-experimental. Interestingly, despite the

Housing mobility

A relatively large non-experimental literature exists on the association between housing mobility and a range of child and adolescent outcomes, from school achievement to social and emotional adjustment, though physical health has not been a primary focus (see Adam, 2004, Fauth, 2004, Jelleyman & Spencer, 2008, for detailed reviews). Analyses have relied on a range of samples, from those that are nationally representative (e.g., Pribesh & Downey, 1999, Wood et al., 1993) to those that are

Homeownership

Multiple well-designed and executed studies find that growing up in an owned rather than a rented home has a positive effect on a wide range of children's outcomes (e.g., Aaronson, 2000, Boehm & Schlottman, 1999, Conley, 2001, Green & White, 1997, Fogelman et al., 1989, Boyle, 2002, Haurin et al., 2000, Haurin et al., 2002). All of these studies rely on national longitudinal data (e.g., the Panel Study of Income Dynamics [PSID], the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth [NLSY]), and a variety

Subsidized housing

The literature on the relationship between subsidized housing and children's outcomes is limited, but, for the most part, methodologically sound. Three studies examine children's physical health outcomes. In their study of welfare reform in Indiana, Lee, Beecroft, Khadduri and Patterson (2003) find that welfare families in public housing and those using housing vouchers are better able to afford medical care than comparable unassisted families that, on average, have much higher cost burdens. In

Housing unaffordability

“Affordability” of any good or service is most often defined in one of two ways: an amount that does not undermine the consumer's ability to purchase basic necessities, or the amount paid for a good or service by the typical consumer. The housing field has adopted a particular rule of thumb that incorporates both of these definitions. Spending more than 30% of a household's income on housing is considered “unaffordable.”

Despite media attention devoted to the growing unaffordability of housing

Discussion

Our review sought to assess the current knowledge base on housing and children's development. We focused on six housing features–physical quality, crowding, mobility, homeownership, subsidized housing, and affordability–with potential links to child health and well-being. In this section, we highlight what we believe we know at this point from our review. We provide a discussion of methodological and conceptual issues that are raised by this review and that must be addressed to move the field

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge support for this paper from the Fannie Mae Foundation and the Freddie Mac Foundation. Additional support was provided to the first author from the William T. Grant Foundation and to the second author by the MacArthur Foundation. This paper draws on recent work by the second author (see Newman, 2008). Research assistance was provided by A. Robie and S. Anderson and production assistance by L. Vernon-Russell.

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