The Impact of Public Housing Demolitions on Student Achievement in Chicago.

This paper exploits a natural experiment created by public housing closings in Chicago to examine the impact of residential relocation on educational outcomes. During the 1990s, the Chicago Housing Authority closed over 7,400 units of public housing as part of redevelopment and consolidation efforts. Households affected by the closures were offered Section 8 vouchers to move to private housing. Using the home addresses provided in school records, this study matched students to public housing developments and tracked educational outcomes over time for children affected and unaffected by closings. Results found that children in families who were offered the opportunity to relocate from high-rise public housing did no better than their peers. Though these children were considerably less likely to be living in high-rise public housing, they had achievement scores and dropout rates identical to comparison students. These findings suggest that high-rise public housing does not have an independent impact on student achievement and that eliminating high-rise public housing will not necessarily lead to benefits documented in earlier housing mobility experiments. Instead, targeted efforts to move families to substantially better neighborhoods may be necessary to obtain results documented in earlier programs. (Contains 37 references.) (SM)