Collaborative Research: Housing Status and Life Course after Privatization in Russia

俄罗斯私有化后的住房状况和生活历程本研究考察住房状况(数量、质量和保有权)是否以及如何影响社会经济不平等、家庭的形成和解散，以及主观看法和前景。社会科学家观察到，住房的各个方面可能直接影响结果，如子女的教育和职业成就、结婚率、同居率、离婚率和生育率，以及感受到的安全感、幸福感、生活满意度和政治态度。但我们不知道住房是否对这些结果有独立的因果影响，因为家庭以非随机的方式获得住房：影响获得住房的相同变量(如家庭财富和收入)也影响教育程度、结婚率和幸福感。换句话说，住房可能内生于它所声称塑造的结果。该项目利用当代俄罗斯提供的机会，研究住房的因果影响。在苏联的制度下，住房分配是根据家庭结构、年龄和工作资历等标准进行的，而不是根据财富和收入。当苏联解体时，住房存量被私有化，只需给居民他们住房的财产权。这种私有化实际上锁定了苏联时期住房的非市场化分配地位。随后，俄罗斯的房地产市场没有发展起来，主要原因是资金限制。因此，今天住房状况的分布仍然主要基于苏联时代的标准，而不是市场原则，这给了我们一个独特的机会来研究住房状况是否以及如何对生活过程结果产生独立的因果影响。为了利用这个机会，调查人员将对32-55岁的俄罗斯城市居民、他们的配偶或同居伴侣以及他们的一些父母进行一项创新的调查。就在苏联解体之前或之后(1991年12月)，这一群体经历了进入青壮年和中年的关键过渡，当时住房是最重要的。调查将获得调查对象及其配偶/伴侣从1991年到2012年的完整住房历史(包括关于每个居住的住房和如何获得住房的广泛信息)、教育、家庭结构、就业、伙伴关系和生育史、家庭背景特征、子女的教育、一系列态度措施以及其他相关信息。最后，他们将对25%的焦点受访者的父母进行调查，以验证追溯住房历史的准确性，并收集更多信息。该项目将在社会科学上对俄罗斯住房影响的理解方面取得重大进展，这反过来将极大地提高人们对住房在其他国家背景下可能发挥的作用的了解。更广泛的影响。这项调查将是独一无二的，因为它对个人和家庭层面的住房状况以及住房假设影响的结果和行为进行了全面衡量。由此产生的数据文件将向公众开放，从而为住房研究人员增加了一个重要的新资源。这项研究产生的实质性发现将帮助俄罗斯国内外的政策制定者制定有效的政策，以促进住房对不平等、人口结构变化和社会福祉的积极影响和改善消极影响。调查人员将在一系列政策备忘录中报告他们的研究的政策含义。

Housing Status and Life Course after Privatization in RussiaThis study examines whether and how housing status (quantity, quality, and tenure) influences socioeconomic inequality, family formation and dissolution, and subjective perceptions and outlook. Social scientists observe that aspects of housing may directly shape outcomes such as the educational and occupational attainment of children, rates of marriage, cohabitation, divorce, and childbearing, and perceived security, happiness, life satisfaction, and political attitudes. But we do not know whether housing has independent causal effects on these outcomes because households obtain housing in a non-random manner: the same variables (such as family wealth and income) that affect access to housing also shape educational attainment, marriage rates, and happiness. In other words, housing may be endogenous to the outcomes it purportedly shapes. The project takes advantage of the opportunity that contemporary Russia offers to study the causal effects of housing. Under the Soviet system housing was allocated based on criteria like household structure, age, and seniority at work, not wealth and income. When the Soviet Union collapsed, housing stock was privatized by simply giving residents the property rights to their dwellings. This privatization effectively locked-in the non-market distribution of housing status from the Soviet period. Subsequently, housing markets have not developed in Russia, due to mainly capital constraints. Thus, the distribution of housing status today is still based largely on Soviet-era criteria rather than market principles, giving us a unique opportunity to study whether and how housing status exerts independent causal effects on life course outcomes.To take advantage of this opportunity, the investigators will conduct an innovative survey of Russian urbanites ages 32-55, their spouses or cohabiting partners, and some of their parents. This cohort passed through crucial transitions to young and middle adulthood, when housing matters most, just before or after the collapse of the Soviet Union (in December 1991). The survey will obtain complete housing histories of focal respondents and their spouses/partners from 1991 (including extensive information on each dwelling lived in and how it was obtained) through 2012, education, household structure, employment, partnership, and childbearing histories, family background characteristics, the education of their children, a range of attitude measures, and other relevant information. Finally, they will survey the parents of 25% of focal respondents to verify the accuracy of retrospective housing histories and collect more information. The project will produce a major advance in social scientific understanding of the effects of housing in Russia, which in turn will dramatically improve knowledge about how housing might function in other national contexts. Broader impact. The survey will be unique in terms of its comprehensive measures of individual- and household-level housing status and of the outcomes and behaviors that housing is hypothesized to influence. The resulting data file will be available to the public, thereby adding a vital new resource for housing researchers. The substantive findings produced by the study will help policymakers, both within and outside Russia, craft effective policies to promote the positive and ameliorate the negative effects of housing on inequality, demographic change, and the well-being of their societies. The investigators will report on the policy implications of their studies in a series of policy memos.