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Status Inconsistency and Geographic Mobility in the United States
March 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-20
This study examines how neighborhood status and individual status jointly shape geographic mobility in the United States. Drawing on restricted-use American Community Survey data, we conceptualize neighborhood status as the relative standing of a census tract's median family income compared to demographically similar reference neighborhoods, and individual status as a household's relative income rank within its tract. Building on comparison theory and status inconsistency perspectives, we test whether mismatches between neighborhood and individual status influence short-distance (within-county) and long-distance (between-county) mobility. Multinomial logistic models reveal that disadvantaged neighborhood status increases within-county mobility, particularly when paired with high individual status, supporting spatial assimilation arguments. Conversely, low individual status in high-status neighborhoods heightens mobility, consistent with relative deprivation theory rather than status signaling. Results suggest that status inconsistency plays a central role in residential decision-making and that neighborhood status primarily affects short-distance mobility. The findings advance research on stratification and internal migration by integrating relative contextual and positional mechanisms.
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How Do Neighborhoods and Firms Affect Intergenerational Mobility?
March 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-18
We use data from the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics linked to the 2000 Census to study intergenerational earnings mobility in the United States. We augment the standard intergenerational transmission model relating children's log earnings to those of their parent with an additional term representing mean log parent earnings in the childhood neighborhood. The between-neighborhood intergenerational relationship is twice as strong as the within-neighborhood relationship, even after adjusting for measurement error in parents' earnings. Moreover, mean earnings of the parents in a neighborhood capture over 80% of the variation in unrestricted neighborhood effects that reflect differences in 'absolute mobility'. Next, we use an AKM framework to decompose parents', children's, and neighboring parents' earnings into person effects and establishment premiums. Children's person effects are mainly influenced by parents' and neighbors' person effects, whereas children's establishment premiums are mainly influenced by parents' and neighbors' establishment premiums. These patterns point to separate channels for human capital and access to jobs in the intergenerational transmission process. Finally, we explore the implications for the Black-white earnings gap. Neighborhoods explain 30% of the Black-white gap in children's earnings conditional on parents' earnings, operating largely through gaps in average person effects. Conditional on neighborhood average earnings, children from neighborhoods with higher Black shares achieve higher adult earnings.
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Creating High-Opportunity Neighborhoods: Evidence from the HOPE VI Program
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-02
We study whether low-economic-mobility neighborhoods can be transformed into high-mobility areas by analyzing the HOPE VI program, which invested $17 billion to revitalize 262 distressed public housing developments. We estimate the program's impacts using a matched difference-in-differences design, comparing outcomes in revitalized developments to observably similar control developments using anonymized tax records. HOPE VI reduced neighborhood poverty rates by attracting higher-income families to revitalized neighborhoods, but had no causal impact on the earnings of adults living in public housing units. Children raised in revitalized public housing units earn more, are more likely to attend college, and are less likely to be incarcerated. Using a movers exposure design and sibling comparisons, we show that these improvements were driven by changes in neighborhoods' causal effects on children's outcomes. The improvements in neighborhood causal effects were driven in large part by changes in social interaction: HOPE VI increased interaction between public housing residents and peers in surrounding neighborhoods and increased earnings more for subgroups with higher-income peers. Many low-income families in the U.S. currently live in neighborhoods that are as socially isolated as the HOPE VI developments were prior to revitalization. We conclude that it is feasible to create high-opportunity neighborhoods and that connecting socially isolated areas to surrounding communities is a cost-effective approach to doing so.
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Same Shock, Separate Channels: House Prices and Firm Performance in the Great Recession
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-03
Combining confidential business-level microdata with housing and banking data, I document large and persistent effects of local house prices on employment at small businesses, and particularly young businesses, during the Great Recession. I show that the effect on entry is important for explaining the disproportionate effect on young businesses, while young firm exit is also disproportionately affected. I then explore the channels through which house prices affect business outcomes. I use survey data to show that reliance on either personal assets or home equity is associated with increased sensitivity to house prices. I then use local bank balance sheet information to show both young and old firms are sensitive to local credit shocks, with some evidence of a larger effect on young businesses. I develop a macroeconomic model that is consistent with these findings where house prices work through two channels: a bank credit supply channel and a housing collateral channel.
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Housing Capital and Intergenerational Mobility in the United States
August 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-55
Housing represents the most important capital asset for most U.S. families. Despite substantial analysis of the intergenerational mobility of income, large gaps in our knowledge of the distribution of housing assets and their transmission over time remain, as housing is generally not reflected by income flows. Using novel linked data that combines survey responses with administrative tax data and information on ownership and valuation from property tax records for over 3.4 million families, we provide new evidence on the intergenerational transmission of housing capital. We find that housing capital is more persistent across generations than labor income. We document important disparities between average housing outcomes for White and Black children. These difference persist even conditional on parent rank in the distribution of housing assets, with the gap growing throughout the parental housing capital distribution. A decomposition shows that average differences in children's labor market outcomes associated with parental assets explain about half of the observed intergenerational persistence (a 'labor income channel'), and that there is also a substantial 'direct channel' ' conditional on children having the same earnings, children of parents with more housing assets have more assets themselves on average. The direct channel is also important for explaining the intergenerational gap in outcomes of Black and White children. Finally, we present quasi-experimental evidence that local housing supply constraints help explain spatial differences in intergenerational persistence across US counties. Our results establish the importance of housing markets, both independently from and jointly with labor markets, in shaping the intergenerational persistence of economic resources.
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Finding Suburbia in the Census
June 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-40
This study introduces a methodology that goes beyond the urban/rural dichotomy to classify areas into detailed settlement types: urban cores, suburbs, exurbs, outlying towns, and rural areas. Utilizing a database that provides housing unit estimates for census tracts as defined in 2010 for all decennial census years from 1940 to 2020, this research enables a longitudinal analysis of urban spatial expansion. By maintaining consistent geography across time, the methodology described in this paper emphasizes the era of development, as well as proximity to large urban centers. This broadly applicable methodology provides a framework for comparing the evolution of urban landscapes over a significant historical period, revealing trends in the transformation of territory from rural to urban, as well as associated suburbanization and exurban growth.
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Consequences of Eviction for Parenting and Non-parenting College Students
June 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-35
Amidst rising and increasingly unaffordable rents, 7.6 million people are threatened with eviction each year across the United States'and eviction rates are twice as high for renters with children. One important and neglected population who may experience unique levels of housing insecurity is college students, especially given that one in five college students are parents. In this study, we link 11.9 million student records to eviction filings from housing courts, demographic characteristics reported in decennial census and survey data, incomes reported on tax returns by students and their parents, and dates of birth and death from the Social Security Administration. Parenting students are more likely than non-parenting students to identify as female (62.81% vs. 55.94%) and Black (19.66% vs. 14.30%), be over 30 years old (42.73% vs. 20.25%), and have parents with lower household incomes ($100,000 vs. $140,000). Parenting students threatened with eviction (i.e., had an eviction filed against them) are much more likely than non-threatened parenting students to identify as female (81.18% vs. 62.81%) and Black (56.84% vs. 19.66%). In models adjusted for individual and institutional characteristics, we find that being threatened with an eviction was significantly associated with reduced likelihood of degree completion, reduced post-enrollment income, reduced likelihood of being married post-enrollment, and increased post-enrollment mortality. Among parenting students, 38.38% (95% confidence interval (CI): 32.50-44.26%) of non-threatened students completed a bachelor's degree compared to just 15.36% (CI: 11.61-19.11%) of students threatened with eviction. Our findings highlight the long-term economic and health impacts of housing insecurity during college, especially for parenting students. Housing stability for parenting students may have substantial multigenerational benefits for economic mobility and population health.
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The Effects of Eviction on Children
May 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-34
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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From Marcy to Madison Square? The Effects of Growing Up in Public Housing on Early Adulthood Outcomes
November 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-67
This paper studies the effects of growing up in public housing in New York City on children's long-run outcomes. Using linked administrative data, we exploit variation in the age children move into public housing to estimate the effects of spending an additional year of childhood in public housing on a range of economic and social outcomes in early adulthood. We find that childhood exposure to public housing improves labor market outcomes and reduces participation in federal safety net programs, particularly for children from the most disadvantaged families. Additionally, we find there is some heterogeneity in impacts across public housing developments. Developments located in neighborhoods with relatively fewer renters and higher household incomes are better for children overall. Our estimate of the marginal value of public funds suggests that for every $1 the government spends per child on public housing, children receive $1.40 in benefits, including $2.30 for children from the most disadvantaged families.
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Household Wealth and Entrepreneurial Career Choices: Evidence from Climate Disasters
July 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-39
This study investigates how household wealth affects the human capital of startups, based on U.S. Census individual-level employment data, deed records, and geographic information system (GIS) data. Using floods as a wealth shock, a regression discontinuity analysis shows inundated residents are 7% less likely to work in startups relative to their neighbors outside the flood boundary, within a 0.1-mile-wide band. The effect is more pronounced for homeowners, consistent with the wealth effect. The career distortion leads to a significant long-run income loss, highlighting the importance of self-insurance for human capital allocation.
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