TY  - JOUR
AU  - Jacob,Brian A.
AU  - Ludwig,Jens
AU  - Miller,Douglas L.
TI  - The Effects of Housing and Neighborhood Conditions on Child Mortality
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17369
PY  - 2011
Y2  - August 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17369
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17369.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Brian Jacob
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
University of Michigan
735 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Tel: 734-615-6994
Fax: NA
E-Mail: bajacob@umich.edu

Jens Ludwig
University of Chicago
1155 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/834-0811
Fax: 773/834-1582
E-Mail: jludwig@uchicago.edu

Douglas L. Miller
Department of Economics
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616-8578
Tel: 530/752-8490
E-Mail: dlmiller@ucdavis.edu
AB  - In this paper we estimate the causal effects on child mortality from moving into less distressed neighborhood environments. We match mortality data to information on every child in public housing that applied for a housing voucher in Chicago in 1997 (N=11,848). Families were randomly assigned to the voucher wait list, and only some families were offered vouchers. The odds ratio for the effects of being offered a housing voucher on overall mortality rates is equal to 1.11 for all children (95% CI 0.54 to 2.10), 1.50 for boys (95% CI 0.72 to 2.89) and 0.00 for girls – that is, the voucher offer is perfectly protective for mortality for girls (95% CI 0 to 0.79). Our paper also addresses a methodological issue that may arise in studies of low-probability outcomes – perfect prediction by key explanatory variables.
ER  -