Evaluation of the HUD Housing Choice Voucher Mobility Demonstration Project

Project Highlights

Vouchers are designed

to make it possible for people to move to neighborhoods and communities with better opportunities, improving individual and family well-being.

Early analyses did not

reveal the whole picture. When HUD examined the results of the first vouchers introduced three decades ago, researchers found few short-term benefits. They appeared to have no discernable impact on individual or family earnings or the performance of children in low-income families that used them to relocate.

Over time,

researchers found strong positive gains, including higher college attendance rates (at better colleges) and higher incomes among children who had participated in the voucher program (compared to their peers) by the time they reached their mid-twenties.

“
[E]very year spent in a better area during childhood increases college attendance rates and earnings in adulthood, so the gains from moving to a better area are larger for children..."

Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence F. KatzThe Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment (American Economic Review)