1. Moving to Opportunity or Isolation? Network Effects of a Randomized Housing Lottery in Urban India
- Author
-
Erica Field, Rohini Pande, and Sharon Barnhardt
- Subjects
Economic growth ,Download ,Population ,0211 other engineering and technologies ,02 engineering and technology ,Subsidized housing ,Family income ,Human capital ,jel:H42 ,Lottery ,jel:R21 ,Income distribution ,0502 economics and business ,Economics ,050207 economics ,Moving to Opportunity ,education ,and growth ,and transportation economics ,economic development ,innovation ,mathematical and quantitative methods ,public economics ,real estate ,regional ,rural ,technological change ,urban ,jel:C93 ,education.field_of_study ,Poverty ,05 social sciences ,1. No poverty ,021107 urban & regional planning ,jel:O12 ,Demographic economics ,Business ,General Economics, Econometrics and Finance ,Slum ,jel:O18 - Abstract
A housing lottery in an Indian city provided winning slum dwellers the opportunity to move into improved housing on the city’s periphery. Fourteen years later, relative to lottery losers, winners report improved housing farther from the city center, but no change in family income or human capital. Winners also report increased isolation from family and caste networks and lower access to informal insurance. We observe significant program exit: 34% of winners never moved into the subsidized housing and 32% eventually exited. Our results point to the importance of considering social networks when designing housing programs for the poor.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
- Published
- 2017