Public Housing and Health: Is There a Connection?

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between public housing and health outcomes among low-income housing residents. While public housing can be dangerous and unhealthy environments to live, the subsidized rent may free up resources for nutritious food and health care. In addition, public housing may be of higher quality than the available alternatives, it may provide easier access to health clinics willing to serve the poor, and it may link residents to social support networks, which can improve mental health and the ability to access higher-quality grocery stores. To test whether there is a "back-door" health benefit to the public housing program, we analyze data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. We minimize the effects of selection into public housing with controls and instrumental variables estimation and find that public housing residence may reduce the mother's probability of smoking. The other results are sensitive to the instrumental variable used, and thus, we conclude that, except with respect to smoking, we are unable to detect a robust health effect of public housing.

Keywords: public housing, health

JEL Classification: I1, I3