The Effects of Eviction on Children
May 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-34
Abstract
Eviction may be an important channel for the intergenerational transmission of poverty, and concerns about its effects on children are often raised as a rationale for tenant protection policies. We study how eviction impacts children's home environment, school engagement, educational achievement, and high school completion by assembling new data sets linking eviction court records in Chicago and New York to administrative public school records and restricted Census records. To disentangle the consequences of eviction from the effects of correlated sources of economic distress, we use a research design based on the random assignment of court cases to judges who vary in their leniency. We find that eviction increases children's residential mobility, homelessness, and likelihood of doubling up with grandparents or other adults. Eviction also disrupts school engagement, causing increased absences and school changes. While we find little impact on elementary and middle school test scores, eviction substantially reduces high school course credits. Lastly, we find that eviction reduces high school graduation and use a novel bounding method to show that this finding is not driven by differential attrition. The disruptive effects of eviction appear worse for older children and boys. Our evidence suggests that the impact of eviction on children runs through the disruption to the home environment or school engagement rather than deterioration in school or neighborhood quality, and may be moderated by access to family support networks.
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disadvantaged,
housing,
relocation,
poverty,
neighborhood,
intergenerational,
residence,
rent,
renter
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Yale University,
National Science Foundation,
Ordinary Least Squares,
National Bureau of Economic Research,
University of Chicago,
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Department of Economics,
Decennial Census,
Chicago Census Research Data Center,
Department of Education,
National Center for Health Statistics,
Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board,
2010 Census,
Federal Statistical Research Data Center,
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