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Discussion Paper
Developing Inclusive Communities: Challenges and Opportunities for Mixed-Income Housing
Over the past decade, housing costs have risen faster than incomes. The need for affordable rental housing has well outpaced the number of available units as well as funding allocations at the federal level. Local regulation and land use policies that increase the cost of subsidized, mixed-income housing construction and preservation have contributed to the affordability problem. {{p}} To meet the affordable housing needs in U.S. communities, innovation, creativity, and "out of the box" thinking may be required, particularly as it relates to reducing the rapidly increasing costs of ...
Discussion Paper
Rental Housing Affordability in the Southeast: Data from the Sixth District
Housing data are available for most large metropolitan regions in the Atlanta Fed's Southeast region. However, many midsized metropolitan, micropolitan, and nonmetro areas lack detailed data on rental housing affordability and housing supply needs by income level. These data are important for state and local governments, affordable housing developers, and housing advocates to inform housing policy. Therefore, the Atlanta Fed partnered with the Shimberg Center at the University of Florida to analyze census data using a methodology developed for Shimberg's periodic Rental Market Study for the ...
Discussion Paper
Developing Inclusive Communities: Challenges and Opportunities for Mixed-Income Housing
Over the past decade, housing costs have risen faster than incomes. The need for affordable rental housing has well outpaced the number of available units as well as funding allocations at the federal level. Local regulation and land use policies that increase the cost of subsidized, mixed-income housing construction and preservation have contributed to the affordability problem.To meet the affordable housing needs in U.S. communities, innovation, creativity, and "out of the box" thinking may be required, particularly as it relates to reducing the rapidly increasing costs of development. ...
Discussion Paper
Rental Housing Affordability in the Southeast: Data from the Sixth District
Housing data are available for most large metropolitan regions in the Atlanta Fed's Southeast region. However, many midsized metropolitan, micropolitan, and nonmetro areas lack detailed data on rental housing affordability and housing supply needs by income level. These data are important for state and local governments, affordable housing developers, and housing advocates to inform housing policy. Therefore, the Atlanta Fed partnered with the Shimberg Center at the University of Florida to analyze census data using a methodology developed for Shimberg's periodic Rental Market Study for the ...
Working Paper
How Important Is Health Inequality for Lifetime Earnings Inequality?
Using a dynamic panel approach, we provide empirical evidence that negative health shocks reduce earnings. The effect is primarily driven by the participation margin and is concentrated in less educated individuals and those with poor health. We build a dynamic, general equilibrium, life cycle model that is consistent with these findings. In the model, individuals whose health is risky and heterogeneous choose to either work, or not work and apply for social security disability insurance (SSDI). Health affects individuals’ productivity, SSDI access, disutility from work, mortality, and ...
Working Paper
The Impact of Government Transfer Payment Frequency on Consumption: Evidence from Delayed UI
We study how the frequency of government transfer payments affects spending behavior. Our empirical approach uses transaction-level data on income and spending and exploits quasi-random delays in the receipt of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. Spending drops by about half of the loss in income that occurs while individuals wait for UI benefits, revealing the value of periodic payments for liquidity-constrained individuals. Once delayed payments are received as lump sums, individuals reallocate spending toward less commonly purchased big-ticket categories that are dominated by durables. ...
Working Paper
The Impacts of Unauthorized Immigration on U.S. Labor and Housing Markets: New Evidence from Administrative Microdata
From early 2021 to early 2024, the U.S. experienced an unprecedented boom in unauthorized immigration, followed by a rapid slowdown beginning in mid-2024. We provide the first systematic empirical assessment of the labor- and housing-market effects of this episode. Using newly available administrative microdata on individual immigrants, we construct measures of net unauthorized immigration at the national and local levels and exploit plausibly exogenous variation across local markets. We find that unauthorized immigrant worker flows (UIWF) increased local employment approximately one-for-one, ...
Working Paper
The Impacts of Unauthorized Immigration on U.S. Labor and Housing Markets: New Evidence from Administrative Microdata
From early 2021 through early 2024, the U.S. experienced an unprecedented boom in unauthorized immigration, with substantial heterogeneity across local economies. Using administrative microdata, we construct new measures of national and local unauthorized immigration flows and exploit exogenous variation using multiple empirical designs. Unauthorized immigrant worker flows increased local employment approximately one-for-one, with mixed evidence of wage depression. They also raised house prices and rents without expanding housing supply. Finally, these flows reduced labor income per capita ...
Working Paper
Disability Benefit Growth and Disability Reform in the U.S.: Lessons from Other OECD Nations
Unsustainable growth in program costs and beneficiaries, together with a growing recognition that even people with severe impairments can work, led to fundamental disability policy reforms in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Great Britain. In Australia, rapid growth in disability recipiency led to more modest reforms. Here we describe the factors driving unsustainable DI program growth in the U.S., show their similarity to the factors that led to unsustainable growth in these other four OECD countries, and discuss the reforms each country implemented to regain control over their cash transfer ...
Working Paper
Rural Affordable Rental Housing : Quantifying Need, Reviewing Recent Federal Support, and Assessing the Use of Low Income Housing Tax Credits in Rural Areas
Recently, there has been significant interest in the high levels of rental cost burden being experienced across the United States. Much of this scholarship has focused on rental cost burdens in larger urban areas, or at the national level, and has not explored differences in the prevalence of rental cost burden in urban versus rural communities. In this paper, I find that rental cost burdens are a challenge facing both urban and rural communities. However, despite the need for affordable rental housing in rural communities identified, I find the amount of resources made available by the ...