Housing trade-offs as they are perceived and as they affect children's well-being

描述（由调查员提供）：如果有3到8岁孩子的贫困家庭想要更大更好的住房单元，那么为了稳定的住房预算，他们可能不得不选择学校更差的社区，因为那里的租金更低。如果同一个家庭寻找更好的社区或学校，那么这可能会导致一个更小或更差的单元，因为这些更好的地点的租金更高。这种权衡促使了这项研究的开展。它有三个目的：(1)了解不同种族/民族和收入群体的家庭可选择的住房种类，这些家庭的住房选择也可能导致社区和学校质量的系统性差异；(2)在40个月的时间里，了解这些住房选择及其与社区和学校的联系如何共同影响3至8岁儿童的社会情感发展、学习成绩和健康。这将使我们得出结论，住房、社区和学校质量的哪种组合最能支持儿童的积极发展。(3)我们还将了解家庭实际上更喜欢居住在哪种特定的住房、社区和学校组合中，从而了解这些偏好在多大程度上为给定家庭收入的儿童带来了可能的最佳发展结果。这项拟议的研究在克利夫兰、达拉斯、丹佛和西雅图进行，之所以选择这些城市，是因为它们采用抽签方式分发第8条住房券，而且它们在其他可能影响住房权衡对儿童影响的因素上也存在差异——例如，他们的种族/民族混合、私人租赁住房市场的紧张程度，以及丧失抵押品赎回权危机的打击程度。我们试图确定住房可用性、儿童效应和住房偏好的模式，这些模式在各个城市都很强大。这些为未来的研究和政策提供了最好的基础。将进行为期40个月的三波纵向调查。它有两层。第一组是在每个城市随机抽取的收入低于地区中位数且至少有一个3至8岁孩子的家庭阶层。第二阶层是有同龄子女的家庭，他们申请了住房券，并被宣布符合条件。一半的人将获得代金券，另一半则不会，随机删除的方法是将研究和控制的儿童减少到我们的权力分析所期望的数量——各个阶层的3450名儿童和2654名看护人，每个单独的阶层各占一半。儿童在三个时间点的结果是：内化和外化行为，数学和阅读测试的表现以及肥胖。目标1的分析依赖于享乐回归（hedonic regression），即根据住宅单元、社区和学校的属性预测住房成本。目标2使用倾向得分与一般阶层和随机分配作为工具变量与住房凭证阶层。目标3依赖于一个小插曲实验，该实验改变了住房、社区和学校质量的三个属性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by investigator): If poorer families with children aged from 3 to 8 want larger and better dwelling units, then for a constant housing budget they will likely have to locate in worse neighborhoods with worse schools because rents are lower there. If the same families seek better neighborhoods or schools, then this will likely entail a smaller or otherwise worse unit because rents are higher in these better locations. This trade-off motivates the proposed study. It has three aims: (1) To understand the kinds of housing options available to families of different racial/ethnic and income groups, whose housing options are also likely to entail systematic variation in the quality of neighborhoods and schools; (2) To learn how these housing options and their links to neighborhoods and schools jointly affect the socioemotional development, academic achievement and health of children aged from 3 to 8 over a period of 40 months. This will allow us to conclude which combinations of housing, neighborhood and school quality best support positive child development. (3) We will also learn which specific combinations of housing, neighborhoods and schools families actually prefer to live in and thus the extent to which these preferences entail the best possible developmental outcomes for children of a given family income. The proposed study takes place in Cleveland, Dallas, Denver and Seattle, all chosen because they use a lottery to distribute their Section 8 housing vouchers and because they also differ on other factors that might affect how housing trade-offs impact on children - e.g., their racial/ethnic mix, the tightness of the private market for rental housing, ad how hard the foreclosure crisis hit. We seek to identify patterns of housing availability, child effects and housing preferences that are robust across cities. These provide the best foundations for future research and policy. A three-wave longitudinal survey will be conducted over 40 months. It will have two strata. The first is a randomly selected stratum of families in each city whose income is below the area median and who have at least one child aged from 3 to 8. The second stratum is of families with the same-aged children who have applied for a housing voucher and been declared eligible. Half will win a voucher and half not, with random deletion being used to prune study and control children to the numbers desired by our power analyses-- 3,450 children and 2,654 caregivers across strata and half of this in each of the separate strata. The child outcomes at three time points are: internalizing and externalizing behaviors, performance on math and reading tests and obesity. The analysis of Aim 1 depends on hedonic regressions that predict housing costs from attributes of dwelling units, neighborhoods and schools. Aim 2 uses propensity scores with the general stratum and random assignment as an instrumental variable with the housing voucher stratum. Aim 3 depends on a vignette experiment that varies three attributes for each of housing, neighborhood and school quality. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed research will improve the design of US housing policy for poorer families by providing policy makers with empirical evidence about: (1) how low income constrains available housing options, (2) how these housing options affect child development, and (3) how preferences and social-structural constraints jointly shape housing conditions among low income families.