Housing Voucher Take‐Up and Labor Market Impacts

Low participation rates in government assistance programs are a major policy concern in the United States. This paper studies take‐up of Section 8 housing vouchers, a program in which take‐up rates are quite low among interested and eligible households. We link 18,109 households in Chicago that were offered vouchers through a lottery to administrative data and study how baseline employment, earnings, public assistance, arrests, residential location, and children's academic performance predict take‐up. Our analysis finds mixed evidence of whether the most disadvantaged or distressed households face the largest barriers to program participation. We also study the causal impact of peer behavior on take‐up by exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the timing of voucher offers. We find that the probability of lease‐up increases with the number of neighbors who recently received voucher offers. Finally, we explore the policy implications of increasing housing voucher take‐up by applying reweighting methods to existing causal impact estimates of voucher receipt. This analysis suggests that greater utilization of vouchers may lead to larger reductions in labor market activity. Differences in take‐up rates across settings may be important to consider when assessing the external validity of studies identifying the effects of public assistance programs.     

共同富裕视角下住房公积金制度的改革思路——逻辑解释、问题剖析与政策优化

共同富裕是社会主义的本质要求,是中国式现代化的重要特征。作为中国特色政策性住房消费金融制度,住房公积金在解决城镇居民住房问题、推动住房市场化改革等方面发挥了重要历史作用。从本质上看,住房公积金制度对于推动实现共同富裕具有多维度逻辑解释,它是保障住房权的重要工具,是收入分配的重要渠道,是社会财富分配的重要纽带,是房地产市场平稳健康发展的重要抓手,是实现精神富裕的重要支撑。然而,在扎实推动共同富裕的时代背景下,住房公积金制度需要明晰属性定位,突破有限公众参与的问题,完善先富帮后富的政策机制,顺应全国统一大市场的建设要求。在统筹推进住房公积金制度改革中,需要处理好建制扩面与企业减负之间的关系,处理好一体化发展与因城施策之间的关系,处理好住房租赁和住房购买之间的关系,处理好金融功能提升与资金安全稳健之间的关系,处理好个体收益与集体利益之间的关系。为此,应该持续扩大住房公积金制度覆盖面,积极推动住房公积金制度立法进程,稳步推进住房公积金跨区域一体化发展,科学创新住房公积金使用方式,系统构建住房公积金协同治理体系。