Capitalism and Freedom

Families, primarily female-headed minority households with children, living in high-poverty public housing projects in five U.S. cities were offered housing vouchers by lottery in the Moving to Opportunity program. Four to seven years after random assignment, families offered vouchers lived in safer neighborhoods that had lower poverty rates than those of the control group not offered vouchers. We find no significant overall effects of this intervention on adult economic self-sufficiency or physical health. Mental health benefits of the voucher offers for adults and for female youth were substantial. Beneficial effects for female youth on education, risky behavior, and physical health were offset by adverse effects for male youth. For outcomes that exhibit significant treatment effects, we find, using variation in treatment intensity across voucher types and cities, that the relationship between neighborhood poverty rate and outcomes is approximately linear.

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Experimental Analysis of Neighborhood Effects

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered randomly selected families housing vouchers to move from high-poverty housing projects to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We analyze MTO’s impacts on children’s long-term outcomes using tax data. We find that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood when young (before age 13) increases college attendance and earnings and reduces single parenthood rates. Moving as an adolescent has slightly negative impacts, perhaps because of disruption effects. The decline in the gains from moving with the age when children move suggests that the duration of exposure to better environments during childhood is an important determinant of children’s long-term outcomes. (JEL I31, I38, J13, R23, R38)

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The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment

Abiotic stresses (such as metals/metalloids, salinity, ozone, UV-B radiation, extreme temperatures and drought) are among the most challenging threats to agricultural system and economic yield of crop plants. These stresses (in isolation and/or combination) induce numerous adverse effects in plants, impair biochemical/physiological and molecular processes, and eventually cause severe reductions in plant growth, development and overall productivity. Phytohormones have been recognized as a strong tool for sustainably alleviating adverse effects of abiotic stresses in crop plants. The significance of salicylic acid (SA) has been increasingly recognized in improved plant abiotic stress-tolerance via SA-mediated control of major plant-metabolic processes. However, the basic biochemical/physiological and molecular mechanisms that potentially underpin SA-induced plant-tolerance to major abiotic stresses remain least discussed. Based on recent reports, this paper: (a) overviews historical background and biosynthesis of SA under both optimal and stressful environments in plants; (b) critically appraises the role of SA in plants exposed to major abiotic stresses; (c) cross-talks potential mechanisms those are expected to govern SA-induced plant abiotic stress-tolerance; and finally (d) briefly highlights major aspects so far unexplored in the current context.

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Salicylic acid-induced abiotic stress tolerance and underlying mechanisms in plants

ference of 4.61 percentage points (95% confidence interval (CI), −8.54 to −0.69), 3.38 percentage points (95% CI, −6.39 to −0.36), and 4.31 percentage points (95% CI, −7.82 to −0.80), respectively. The differences between the group receiving traditional vouchers and the control group were not significant. CONCLUSIONS The opportunity to move from a neighborhood with a high level of poverty to one with a lower level of poverty was associated with modest but potentially important reductions in the prevalence of extreme obesity and diabetes. The mechanisms under - lying these associations remain unclear but warrant further investigation, given their potential to guide the design of community-level interventions intended to improve health. (Funded by HUD and others.)

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Neighborhoods, Obesity, and Diabetes — A Randomized Social Experiment

This article uses administrative data on nonelderly, nondisabled households that received U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rental assistance between 1995 and 2002 combined with data from other sources to estimate the effect of low-income housing programs on these households'labor earnings and employment. Using longitudinal data to explain the change in these measures of market labor supply makes it possible to account for immutable, unobservable household characteristics that are determinants of market labor supply and correlated with program participa tion. Employing a large random sample of households throughout the country makes it possible to produce estimates of the national average effect of each type of housing assistance. Using administrative data makes it possible to identify accurately the type of housing assistance received. The results indicate that each broad type of housing assistance has substantial negative effects on labor earnings that are somewhat smaller for tenant-based housing vouchers than for either type of project-based assistance. They also suggest that participation in the little-used Family Self-Sufficiency program, an initiative within the public housing and housing voucher programs to promote self-sufficiency, significantly increases labor earnings.

The Effects of Different

Rent control affects the allocation of resources and the distribution of well-being. In New York City in 1968, it is estimated that occupants of controlled housing consumed 4.4 percent less housing service and 9.9 percent more nonhousing goods than they would have consumed in the absence of rent control. The resulting increase in their real income was 3.4 percent. Poorer families received larger benefits than richer families. The cost of rent control to landlords was twice its benefit to their tenants. The estimates are produced within the framework of a simple general equilibrium model; the data are on thousands of families and their apartments.

An Econometric Analysis of Rent Control

A Competitive Theory of the Housing Market

The primary purposes of this paper are to (1) consider the justifications that have been offered for housing subsidies to low-income households and the implications of these justifications for the evaluation and design of housing programs, (2) describe the most important features of the largest rental housing programs for low-income households in the United States, (3) summarize the empirical evidence on the major effects of these programs, and (4) analyze the major options for reform of the system of housing subsidies. The largest rental programs are HUD's Public Housing, Section 236, Section 8 New Construction/Substantial Rehab, Section 8 Existing, USDA's Section 515, and the IRS's Low Income Housing Tax Credit. The effects of these programs that will be considered include effects on the housing occupied by recipients of the subsidy and their consumption of other goods, effects on labor supply of assisted households, the distribution of benefits among recipients, participation rates among different types of households, effects on the types of neighborhoods in which subsidized households live and the effect of subsidized housing and households on their neighbors, the effect on prices of unsubsidized housing, and the cost-effectiveness of alternative methods for delivering housing assistance.

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Edgar O. Olsen

Papers

The Effects of Different

An Econometric Analysis of Rent Control

A Competitive Theory of the Housing Market

Housing Programs for Low-Income Households

The benefits and costs of public housing in New York City