Housing, neighbourhoods and development outcomes of children in Canada

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Résumé (français)

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Résumé (anglais)

We use data from Cycles 1 to 3 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth to examine whether and how much housing and neighbourhood quality affect child outcomes. Home ownership, housing assistance, the need for major repairs, residential stability, underhousing, and neighbourhood quality are used as explanatory variables in population-averaged panel data and endogenous treatment models to estimate the impact of these variables on child cognitive, behavioural, and emotional outcomes. We find positive impacts of home ownership on reading scores, and positive impacts of housing subsidies on boys’ behavioural scores, but negative impacts of subsidies on girls’ emotional scores after controlling for other factors. Both girls and boys fare worse in housing requiring major repairs, but boys are negatively affected by housing instability, while girls are negatively affected by poor neighbourhood quality.