Article

A Research Note on the Prevalence of Housing Eviction Among Children Born in U.S. Cities

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Abstract

A growing body of research suggests that housing eviction is more common than previously recognized and may play an important role in the reproduction of poverty. The proportion of children affected by housing eviction, however, remains largely unknown. We estimate that one in seven children born in large U.S. cities in 1998–2000 experienced at least one eviction for nonpayment of rent or mortgage between birth and age 15. Rates of eviction were substantial across all cities and demographic groups studied, but children from disadvantaged backgrounds were most likely to experience eviction. Among those born into deep poverty, we estimate that approximately one in four were evicted by age 15. Given prior evidence that forced moves have negative consequences for children, we conclude that the high prevalence and social stratification of housing eviction are sufficient to play an important role in the reproduction of poverty and warrant greater policy attention.

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... Another consideration is how housing instability is interconnected with macrolevel economic conditions Hartman & Robinson, 2003;Lens et al., 2020;Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019). First, evictions are not just a condition of poverty, they also create and deepen poverty (Desmond & Kimbro, 2015;Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019) and "can trigger other negative changes in related elements of the lives of those displaced" (Hartman & Robinson, 2003, p. 469). ...
... Another consideration is how housing instability is interconnected with macrolevel economic conditions Hartman & Robinson, 2003;Lens et al., 2020;Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019). First, evictions are not just a condition of poverty, they also create and deepen poverty (Desmond & Kimbro, 2015;Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019) and "can trigger other negative changes in related elements of the lives of those displaced" (Hartman & Robinson, 2003, p. 469). Second, the burden of housing unaffordability is argued to be a component of deprivation leading to strain that is experienced from financial precariousness which may then lead to violence from feelings of anger and frustration (Stansfield & Semenza, 2023). ...
... Given the weakening of rent burden's strength and prior findings of moderation between evictions and deprivation (Semenza et al., 2022), Models 5 and 6 examine interactive relationships. Model 5 explores the interaction between the eviction rate and Economic Deprivation Index since disadvantages are both multidimensional and compounding (Desmond & Western, 2018), and because evictions may be both causes and effects of poverty (Desmond & Kimbro, 2015;Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019). Thus, the relationship between evictions and economic deprivation estimates are likely complex and difficult to separate. ...
Article
Housing instability has become increasingly important to the study of crime and homicide. Merging Eviction Lab, census, and crime data, we regress multiple measures of housing instability on homicide rates in large U.S. cities, and then comparatively with violent and property crime rates. After finding that evictions and rent burden are distinct indicators, we find that rent burden is directly related to homicide but also has a moderating relationship with economic deprivation. Evictions and other housing indicators are largely unrelated to crime. We conclude by discussing the implications of housing instability in the crime literature and directions for future research.
... Relatedly, we found that most studies focused on legalrather than informalevictions. While understandable in light of data availability limitations (and well-documented challenges associated with measuring informal evictions) (Desmond, 2016;van Laere et al., 2016;Reed et al., 2011;Lundberg and Donnelly, 2018), it is also important to note that such omissions may downwardly bias associations between eviction and health (Lundberg and Donnelly, 2018), given evidence that informal evictions are at least as common as court-reported evictions in the U.S. (Gromis and Desmond, 2021;Desmond and Shollenberger, 2015). Thus, we recommend that future research continue to develop and incorporate measures of eviction stage, as well as both legal and informal eviction, into their studies. ...
... Relatedly, we found that most studies focused on legalrather than informalevictions. While understandable in light of data availability limitations (and well-documented challenges associated with measuring informal evictions) (Desmond, 2016;van Laere et al., 2016;Reed et al., 2011;Lundberg and Donnelly, 2018), it is also important to note that such omissions may downwardly bias associations between eviction and health (Lundberg and Donnelly, 2018), given evidence that informal evictions are at least as common as court-reported evictions in the U.S. (Gromis and Desmond, 2021;Desmond and Shollenberger, 2015). Thus, we recommend that future research continue to develop and incorporate measures of eviction stage, as well as both legal and informal eviction, into their studies. ...
... [7][8][9] Much less is known about children in families who are evicted, including reliable estimates of their number. 10,11 Analyses linking evictions to census information suggest risk for very low birth weight and infant mortality, 12 though other pediatric health outcomes are uninvestigated. Eviction or a move to shelter disproportionately involve families in deep poverty, women, and those from racial minority backgrounds. ...
... Eviction or a move to shelter disproportionately involve families in deep poverty, women, and those from racial minority backgrounds. 11,13 These disruptions may disconnect children from primary healthcare providers while forcing parents to prioritize competing basic needs. Interagency and inter-system collaboration may help maintain healthcare connections during crises, but there is essentially no rigorous evidence for children who experience eviction and homelessness. ...
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Objectives: This study investigates different approaches to integrating evictions data with Medicaid and homeless shelter utilization records at the individual level for the state of Delaware. We especially focus on evaluating the feasibility of creating an integrated dataset focused on children and adolescents through different approaches to matching. Methods: We attempt to link existing statewide records on evictions, Medicaid, and shelter from 2017-2019. We first compare direct match and probabilistic match approaches to linking evictions and Medicaid records, and then incorporate shelter records. Finally, we consider a limited set of characteristics relevant to potential future public health research among children who experienced eviction, had a shelter stay, and were enrolled in Medicaid. Results: Direct matching resulted in a lower match (14%) rate than probabilistic matching (22%) of eviction records to Medicaid data. Homeless shelter records had a high match rate to Medicaid records, even when using a direct match (75%). A sizeable subset of children (n=216) were linked across the three data sources, though this was from a small percentage of cases in the evictions data. Among this subset of children, most (71%) were enrolled in Medicaid in all three years considered by this study and Black children were greatly overrepresented (75%). Conclusions: Integrating evictions records with other health and human service data involves a number of challenges. Probabilistic matching yielded a considerably higher number of matches after manual review, resulting in a possible study sample of children who have experienced eviction, a homeless shelter stay, and were enrolled in Medicaid. Strategies to increase the match rate for eviction records through using records from other, more universal services may be necessary for investigations that require more comprehensive coverage of the population.
... This rate is nearly identical to that found in another study in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 2003 and2007, that estimated 1 in 14 renter households (7.1%) were evicted annually in predominantly Black inner-city neighborhoods. Consistent with the conclusion that families with children are more likely to be evicted (Desmond, An, Winkler, & Ferriss, 2013;Desmond & Gershenson, 2017), a study using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study estimates 1 in 7 children (more than 14%) born in large U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000 experienced at least one eviction by age 15 (Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019). ...
... Hundreds of thousands of families in the United States are evicted every year. Women, families with children, Black families, families with low incomes, and families living in urban areas are more likely to be evicted than their counterparts (Desmond, 2012a(Desmond, , 2012bDesmond et al., 2013;Hartman & Robinson, 2003;Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019), raising concerns that eviction exacerbates existing social and economic inequalities. Although increasing inequality alone is reason to be concerned about the scope of evictions, researchers find evictions are associated with myriad other negative housing (DeLuca et al., 2019;Desmond, 2016;Sandel et al., 2018), financial (Desmond & Gershenson, Note. ...
Article
U.S. cities are increasingly adopting antieviction policies predicated on the belief that evictions have negative consequences for families and communities. Yet the nature and duration of many of these consequences are relatively unknown. We add to the literature on the consequences of evictions by assessing the enduring effects of eviction on the self-reported health of young adults. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we find evictions have both short-term (12 months) and medium-term (7–8 years) negative impacts on multiple measures of health. Individuals who experience an eviction are more likely to report being in poor general health or experiencing mental health concerns, even many years after an eviction. As state and local governments develop policies to reduce evictions, it is worth noting that any resulting decrease in evictions may have a positive impact on population health, making health professionals effective potential policymaking partners.
... Over a million households are evicted each year (Desmond et al. 2018a). By and large, researchers have treated eviction as a discrete event involving the displacement of poor, severely rent-burdened tenants (Desmond 2016;Lundberg and Donnelly 2019). In describing serial eviction filings, this study challenges that understanding and shows the threat of eviction to be a routine, drawn-out process affecting those beyond the bottom of the rental market and not always resulting in displacement, yet nonetheless exacerbating financial precarity. ...
... Serial filing was characteristic of mid-range rental markets: areas with tenants well-off enough to catch up on rent and avoid displacement but not financially secure enough to consistently pay on the first of the month. Previous research has characterized eviction as a condition affecting poor, severely rentburdened tenants (Desmond 2016;Lundberg and Donnelly 2019). Our results show that the threat of eviction extends beyond the bottom of the rental market. ...
Article
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Drawing on over 8 million eviction court records from twenty-eight states, this study shows the role that eviction filings play in extracting monetary sanctions from tenants. In so doing, it documents an unanticipated feature of housing insecurity: serial eviction filings. Serial eviction filings occur when a property manager files to evict the same household repeatedly from the same address. Almost half of all eviction filings in our sample are associated with serial filings. Combining multivariate analysis with in-depth interviews conducted with thirty-three property managers and ten attorneys and court officials, we document the dynamics and consequences of serial eviction filings. When legal environments expedite the eviction process, property managers use the housing court to collect rent and late fees, passing costs on to tenants. Serial eviction filings exacerbate tenants’ housing cost burden and compromise their ability to find future housing. Using tract-level rent and filing fees, we estimate that each eviction filing translates into approximately $180 in fines and fees for the typical renter household, raising their monthly housing cost by 20%. The study challenges existing views of eviction as a discrete event concentrated among poor renters. Rather, it may be better conceived of as a routinized, drawn-out process affecting a broader segment of the rental market and entailing consequences beyond displacement.
... Residential eviction is a regular occurrence in low-and middleincome communities in the US. For the past two decades, approximately 1 in 40 rental households (representing nearly 4 million people (Graetz et al., 2023)) have been formally evicted each year (The Eviction Lab, 2018), These annual risks accumulate, such that 1 in 7 children in large cities are formally evicted by the time they reach adolescence (Lundberg and Donnelly, 2019). For children living under 50% of the poverty line, that risk is 1 in 4. True eviction rates are higher still, as informal evictions-although difficult to measure-may outnumber formal evictions by as many as 5 to 1 (e.g., being forced to move via extralegal pressure from a landlord: sudden rent hikes, harassment of tenants, etc.) (Gromis and Desmond, 2021). ...
Article
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Evidence suggests that being evicted harms health. Largely ignored in the existing literature, however, is the possibility that evictions exert community-level health effects, affecting evicted individuals’ social networks and shaping broader community conditions. In this narrative review, we summarize evidence and lay out a theoretical model for eviction as a community health exposure, mediated through four paths: 1) shifting ecologies of infectious disease and health behaviors, 2) disruption of neighborhood social cohesion, 3) strain on social networks, and 4) increasing salience of eviction risk. We describe methods for parsing eviction's individual and contextual effects and discuss implications for causal inference. We conclude by addressing eviction's potentially multilevel consequences for policy advocacy and cost-benefit analyses.
... The threat of eviction can also have negative health effects such as an increased likelihood of being hospitalized for a mental health condition [45]. Furthermore, eviction is a stressful life event that can have enduring negative health effects and promote a cycle of multigenerational poverty [46]. ...
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In the United States, there has been a long history of environmental injustice that disproportionately affects racial and ethnic minorities and low-income communities due to racially targeted policies and widespread discrimination. Environmental racism can be revealed in housing discrimination that perpetuates inequities in exposure to environmental pollutants. Biased credit and mortgaging practices such as redlining have led to housing segregation of racial and ethnic minorities in the USA, permitting policymakers to diminish and disinvest in these communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified housing instability for families of color, including Black and Hispanic/Latinx communities, putting them at increased risk for COVID-19 exposure. There is a need to investigate how environmental injustice intensifies the COVID-19 pandemic, illuminates racial and ethnic inequities in exposure to environmental contaminants, and fuels disparities in COVID-19 outcomes. The aims of this paper are to analyze and discuss environmental injustice and racial and ethnic disparities related to COVID-19 and housing. We also propose recommendations to address this pervasive issue.
... Studies of eviction and children also have varied results. One study found prevalence of housing evictions among children born within U.S. cities (Lundberg & Donnelly (2019). Additionally, several studies have found a connection between children and eviction in both the city and suburbs of Milwaukee (Desmond et al., 2013;Desmond & Gershenson, 2017;Hepburn et al., 2022). ...
Article
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This national study investigates the spatial patterns and correlates of housing evictions in the U.S., a critical crisis of local and national significance. A national data set on county-level eviction rates was obtained from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab database, and the data on risk factors of eviction were acquired from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). First, we examined disparate patterns of evictions across U.S. counties, followed by a hot spot analysis to determine clusters of counties with significantly high or low values of eviction rates. The analysis concluded with multiple regression to investigate the associations of eviction rates and 15 CDC SVI indicators. Evictions are most prevalent in populous urban or metropolitan counties; however, eviction rates can be higher in less-populous suburban counties even nonmetropolitan communities. Clusters of counties with significantly high eviction rates (i.e., hot spots) were mainly concentrated in lower Michigan-upper Indiana and the along the east coast that spanned Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The spatial regression model explained a moderate degree of the variations of eviction rates and social vulnerability indicators including income, minority population, single-parent, unemployment rate, apartment living, and low education status were most helpful predictors of eviction. This national study can inform government resource allocation efforts where it provides new insights into the spatial disparities and potential contributing factors of eviction rates across U.S. counties, thus enhancing our understanding of the eviction crisis nationwide.
... However, mothers who received housing assistance are less likely to face an eviction (Donnelly et al., 2017). Furthermore, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to experience eviction: one in four children born into deep poverty experience eviction by age 15 (Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019). ...
Article
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Housing evictions occur throughout the United States but are unevenly distributed within cities and counties. Evictions are more common in some neighborhoods than in others. This study explores why evictions are more prevalent in certain neighborhoods than in others. First, it explores what neighborhood attributes explain the varying prevalence of evictions and eviction filings. Second, it investigates whether federal rental housing assistance reduces neighborhood evictions or eviction filings. Using the Kernel-Based Regularized Least Squares method suitable for exploratory analysis, this study examines the variation in evictions and eviction filings across Kansas City, Missouri, neighborhoods, between 2010 and 2016. This study finds that neighborhood racial composition (percentage of Black rental households) and family composition (percentage of rental households with children) are the strongest predictors of neighborhood evictions and eviction filings. This study finds that neighborhood housing insecurity and gentrification do not significantly affect the prevalence of evictions and eviction filings when other neighborhood characteristics are held constant. Variations in evictions and eviction filings are due to several neighborhood characteristics, which have nonlinear and heterogeneous effects on evictions and eviction filings. It also finds that federal rental housing assistance significantly reduces neighborhood evictions and eviction filings.
... 1 in 7 have experienced an eviction by the time they reach age 15 years; among children born into deep poverty, that number is 1 in 4. 4 Second, from life course epidemiology, 5 we know that adverse experiences, such as evictions, can be particularly damaging when they occur during critical or sensitive periods of development, affecting children's well-being across their entire lives. ...
... Many studies illustrate this point remarkably clearly, for example, Medina et al. (2020) find that in Salt Lake County in the US, Black populations in rental tenures have a higher likelihood of threat of eviction if they are already economically stressed. With a similar focus on eviction, Lundberg & Donnelly (2019) find that children's probability of eviction diverges by family race/ethnicity at time of birth, as well as other existing household disadvantages such as income. Similarly, Clark (2012, p. 117) identifies housing inequalities such as a lack of choice in moving to be disproportionately experienced by groups without household resources such as income, homeownership tenure or property assets, and education. ...
Article
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Housing inequality is far more than a housing matter. To discover how housing inequality has been used across disciplines, and how this may inform future housing research, we performed a systematic scoping review. We found that housing inequality provides multiple understandings as well as a variety of uses, for example, as a measurement tool, a conceptual device, or as subject matter. To draw together useful lessons from this conceptually diverse body of work, we identify four principle uses of ‘housing inequality’ in the literature – an outcome, an experience, a product, and a construct. These four framings offer a level of conceptual clarity for thinking about, and researching, the different expressions of housing inequality. It contributes to housing research by providing an approach for taking into account the multiple and complex roles of housing, and its distribution and impacts across society.
... Moreover, a significant proportion of involuntary displacement happens in informal ways, without the court adjudicating the case. The analyses based on the administrative eviction records, therefore, could miss an important subpopulation from the study (Desmond and Shollenberger, 2015;Lundberg and Donnelly, 2018). To address these gaps in the literature, we leverage the publicly available data from recent national surveys conducted in 2021 and 2022 and examine the association between the self-reported risk of eviction and the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and the usage of prescription medication for mental, emotional, and behavioral conditions. ...
Article
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Although past studies establish a link between residential instability and poor mental health, studies investigating the association between perceived risk of eviction and mental health with nationally representative data are largely lacking. This study examines the association between self-reported risk of eviction and anxiety, depression, and prescription medication use for mental or emotional health reasons. This is a retrospective observational study using the repeated-cross sectional data (n=14548; unweighted) using the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey from July 2021 to March 2022. Survey respondents aged 18 years and above who lived in rented residences and were not caught up with the rent payments at the time of the survey were included in the analysis. The descriptive summary shows a higher prevalence of depression (59.33% vs 37.01%), anxiety (67.01% vs 43.28%), and prescription medication use (26.57% vs 23.68%) among the respondents who are likely to face eviction in the next two months compared to the reference group not at the risk of eviction. When adjusted for demographic characteristics, family context, and socioeconomic setting, the odds of depression, anxiety, and prescription medication use in the at-risk eviction group were significantly higher than in the reference group. Specifically, odds ratios (ORs) [95% CI] for depression, anxiety, and prescription medication use are 2.366 [2.364, 2.369], 2.650 [2.648, 2.653], and 1.172 [1.171, 1.174], respectively. These results suggest that the perceived risk of eviction is associated with elevated mental health problems. Addressing the housing crisis may help decrease the mental health burden among rented households.
... Yet there exist no comprehensive estimates of the annual frequency of eviction lawsuits nationwide. Targeted surveys have identified the prevalence of eviction-related displacement in cities (7,11,12); however, differences in how eviction is measured hinder direct comparisons of high-and low-displacement areas. Surveys covering larger geographical areas (e.g., state, nation) are expensive and frequently underrepresent hard-to-reach populations at risk for eviction, including economically disadvantaged renters and those with unstable housing (13,14). ...
Article
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Significance Several negative effects of forced displacement have been well documented, yet we lack reliable measurement of eviction risk in the national perspective. This prevents accurate estimations of the scope and geography of the problem as well as evaluations of policies to reduce housing loss. We construct a nationwide database of eviction filings in the United States. Doing so reveals that 2.7 million households, on average, are threatened with eviction each year; that the highest eviction filing rates are not concentrated solely in high-cost urban areas; and that state-level housing policies are strongly associated with county-level eviction filing risk. These data facilitate an expanded research agenda on the causes and consequences of eviction lawsuits in the United States.
... The risk of and adverse effects of eviction are not equal throughout society. Households with children face a higher risk of eviction (Desmond et al., 2013), particularly among Black and Latinx mothers (Lundberg and Donnelly, 2019). Communities with higher proportions of African Americans had higher rates of eviction filings even after controlling for poverty rates and rent burdens . ...
Article
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Although evictions are a major disruptor of residential stability, their contribution to health disparities is understudied. Both experiencing eviction and the threat of being evicted are associated with adverse physical and mental health outcomes. Communities with higher proportions of Black people have higher rates of eviction filings. Market characteristics alone are insufficient for explaining the clustering of eviction in neighborhoods of color. Memphis is the fastest-growing rental market in the United States, facing an eviction crisis and is rife with persistent racial health disparities. This study explored the relationship between eviction filings, mental health, and neighborhood racial composition in Memphis to inform local policy approaches. We combined health from the City Health Dashboard, 2019 American Community Survey 5-year estimates, and eviction filings from the Shelby County, TN General Sessions Civil Court. Multivariate regression models were used to examine the relationship between health outcomes and eviction filing rates while controlling other relevant neighborhood characteristics. Separate models were run based on neighborhood racial composition. Poor mental health was significantly associated with higher eviction filling rates in majority Black neighborhoods but not in majority white and racially mixed neighborhoods. These findings point to evictions as an important contributor to racial health inequities in Memphis and the importance of race-conscious policy interventions that address the dual crisis of evictions and racial health disparities.
... Overcrowding, defined as having more than two people per bedroom in the household, is also common, with 19% of renting families with four or more people experiencing overcrowding (Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2019). Approximately one in seven children born in large cities in the United States between 1998 and 2000 experienced eviction due to nonpayment of rent or mortgage (Lundberg & Donnelly, 2018). ...
Article
Adolescents in low-income, marginalized families are vulnerable to behavior problems that impede healthy functioning and threaten long-term well-being. Informal supports may fill an important gap for these households as they navigate financial and social stressors. Instrumental support from social networks and neighborhood cohesion may promote family stability and youth well-being; further, these informal supports may promote resilience to housing insecurity, which is linked with a range of adverse adolescent outcomes. The present study utilized data from a large sample of at-risk families with children (N = 2425) to investigate whether instrumental support and neighborhood cohesion predicted adolescent behavior problems over 10 years and whether these links were mediated by housing insecurity. Results of structural equation modeling with latent variables showed direct links from instrumental support to anxious/depressed behaviors and from neighborhood cohesion to aggressive behaviors, as well as an indirect link from instrumental support to aggressive behavior via housing insecurity. Findings suggest informal supports are an important source of resilience for low-income families who may be excluded from or are reluctant to engage with formal social systems. Further, stable, connected communities with highly embedded social networks can promote housing stability and youth well-being in a virtuous cycle.
... Yet poverty affects more than 10 percent of households and nearly 15 percent of all minor children in across the country (Fox, Glassman, and Pacas 2020;Semega et al. 2020). Nearly 30 percent of children with unemployed parents of working age live in deep poverty, that is, households with incomes below 50 percent of the poverty line (Fox et al. 2015), and nearly one in four children in deep poverty will experience eviction by the age of fifteen (Lundberg and Donnelly 2019). Public assistance, however, helps mitigate the effects of poverty, reaching more than 20 percent of the U.S. population (Census Bureau 2015), with state and local governments spending approximately $673 billion on public assistance programs in 2017 (Urban Institute 2020). ...
Article
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Research on punishment and inequality finds that people with criminal records routinely avoid systems of surveillance. Yet scholarship on monetary sanctions shows that many people experiencing poverty with criminal legal system debt are also involved with the state in other domains of social life. How can these literatures be resolved? In this article, we posit that past research can be reconciled through a focus on financial double-dealing—disparate and contradictory economic entanglements that redistribute welfare resources from individuals to the criminal legal system and its institutional affiliates. Drawing on nationally representative survey data, as well as unique data collected on people with monetary sanctions in seven states, we find that individuals and families receiving cash and noncash public assistance are significantly more likely to owe monetary sanctions and are less likely to pay them. We discuss the implications of multiple-system involvement for ongoing surveillance.
... Eviction thus disrupts children's lives at multiple levels, or ecological systems, at once (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Together, these characteristics make eviction an urgent area of study in child development for the estimated 1 in 7 children living in US cities who will be evicted at least once by the time they reach adolescence (Lundberg and Donnelly, 2019). ...
Article
Eviction upends children's lives and exacerbates deprivation; it remains largely unexamined as a determinant of cognitive development. We assess whether children evicted in infancy, early childhood, and middle childhood exhibit lower scores on four cognitive assessments (measuring executive function, mathematical reasoning, written language skills, and vocabulary skills) at age 9. Using linear regression and selection weights, we analyze longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a national, urban birth cohort (N = 1724 for eviction during infancy, 2126 for early childhood, 1979 for middle childhood). These stages of childhood follow the timing of FFCWS′ data collection waves, with “infancy” data collected in the first year of life, “early childhood” in the third and fifth years of life, and “middle childhood” in the ninth year. In adjusted models, children evicted in middle childhood exhibited scores 0.20–0.43 SDs below similar children who were not (depending on the assessment; p-values = 0.004–0.055), the equivalent of as much as a full year of schooling. Point estimates of the association between eviction in infancy and 3/4 cognitive skills at age 9 were also large, but imprecisely estimated (between −0.25 and −0.28 SDs; p-values = 0.053–0.101), while point estimates for eviction in early childhood were near zero and statistically insignificant. Our large estimates for middle childhood and infancy, compared to earlier residential mobility studies, indicate downwardly mobile moves may exhibit more severe associations with future cognition. Estimates suggest preventing eviction may be a powerful, cost-effective way to safeguard children's cognitive development.
... These "informal" evictions may be twice as common as formal evictions, resulting in millions of forced moves annually. 3 Families struggle to find stable and affordable housing after eviction. An eviction filing, even those that do not result in removal of the tenant, can remain on a tenant's rental history for years, limiting future access to rental housing. ...
... The growing body of literature points out that racial minorities, female-headed households with children (Desmond, 2012;Desmond et al., 2013;Greenberg et al., 2015;Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019), and those who experience repeated transitions in adult members within a household (Desmond & Perkins, 2016) can be more vulnerable to involuntary forms of residential mobility than their counterparts. Thus, the variables related to race, gender, children, marital status are included. ...
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Given the growing threat of housing instability in the United States, this study explores the variability in housing instability experiences in terms of severity and persistence by tracking low-income households in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics data from 2003 to 2017. First, this study examines the associations between one housing instability incident at a particular time and subsequent mobility trajectories. Second, by incorporating sequence analysis, this study explores the conditions under which low-income households are likely to suffer from more chronic forms of housing instability. The results reveal that the more severe one housing instability incident is, the more prolonged the entire housing instability experience is likely to be over time. The ability to maintain homeownership, repeated transitions in partnerships, job insecurity, and repetitively moving across distressed neighborhoods are the conditions for housing instability that occurs more frequently. Moreover, younger households and households with a member with health problems are likely to suffer from more chronic forms of housing instability.
... 15 Another study estimated that one in seven children born in large US cities in 1998-2000, and one in four children living in deep poverty (income below 50% of poverty threshold), experienced eviction by age 15 years. 16 Eviction can also trap individuals in poverty through increased risk of housing instability, homelessness, and job loss, and a reduction in earnings. 17 Individuals who are evicted are also more likely to move to lower quality housing in neighbourhoods with higher rates of poverty and crime 18 19 and low-income parents who are evicted experience more material hardship and worse mental health outcomes. ...
Article
Background Housing instability is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. Recent studies indicate that eviction, which may affect a larger segment of the population than other forms of housing instability, is also associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. However, these studies evaluate eviction across large areas, such as counties, so it remains unclear whether these patterns extend to individual-level pregnancy outcomes. Methods We used data on a cohort of all singleton live births at a single Chicago hospital between March 2008 and March 2018 to investigate the associations between block-group eviction rates and individual adverse pregnancy outcomes. Eviction data were obtained from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. Generalised estimating equations were used to estimate associations and account for correlations among individuals living in the same block groups. Results Individuals living in block groups in the highest quartile for eviction filing rate were 1.17 times as likely to deliver preterm (95% CI: 1.08 to 1.27) and 1.13 times as likely to deliver a small for gestational age infant (95% CI: 1.03 to 1.25) as compared with individuals living in block groups in the lowest quartile. Further, tests for linear trend indicated that for each quartile increase in eviction filing rate, there was a corresponding increase in odds of adverse outcomes (p<0.05). Results were strongest in magnitude for those with low neighbourhood and individual socioeconomic status, who are most likely to be renters and affected by local eviction policies. Conclusion Our results suggest that individuals living in block groups with higher eviction rates are more likely to deliver preterm. Future research should explore associations of individual experience with eviction on adverse pregnancy outcomes and examine whether policies to improve tenant protections also impact pregnancy outcomes.
... Eviction is thus a household-level event that has broader community-level impacts when taken in aggregate measure as a result of the communal instability and significant financial precarity experienced across neighborhoods (Agnew, 1999;Sampson et al., 2002). In essence, the fallout of eviction is likely to be compounded in communities that already suffer from high rates of economic disadvantage because eviction aggravates those collective experiences of poverty (Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019). We therefore anticipate that eviction is particularly correspondent to rates of crime in neighborhoods with higher levels of poverty. ...
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In this study, we use generalized estimating equation (GEE) models to analyze how rates of eviction correspond to homicide, robbery, and burglary rates across all residential neighborhoods in Philadelphia from 2006 through 2016. We assess the moderating role of neighborhood poverty accounting for residential mobility, economic disadvantage, and community composition. We find that eviction is associated with all three types of crime in fully controlled models. Additionally, neighborhood poverty significantly moderates this relationship for robbery and burglary, but not homicide. We discuss the implications of these results with attention to policy opportunities to reduce eviction and suggestions for future research.
... For example, retrospective debt can force the reallocation of scarce household resources away from expenditures on items that promote health and wellbeing toward repayment of that debt, hindering families' economic stability and ability to respond to unexpected needs (Seefeldt 2015). In the worst cases, such debt can lead to reallocation of resources away from basic necessities, causing utility shut-offs, food shortages (Brewer 2018;Chang, Chatterjee, and Kim 2014), and evictions (Lundberg and Donnelly 2019;Desmond 2016). ...
Article
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Wealth inequality in the United States has increased tremendously over the last several decades and has potentially serious repercussions for disparities in child well-being. Household debt, a key component of wealth, may also play a role in such disparities. In this study, we explore the associations of parents’ unsecured debt with children’s socioemotional well-being. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we compare the associations of mothers’ unsecured household debt, fathers’ unsecured household debt, and fathers’ child support arrears with socioemotional outcomes among nine- and fifteen-year old children who have a nonresident father. We find robust evidence that nonresident fathers’ child support arrears, but not other types of parental household debt, are associated with worse outcomes and that these associations become stronger as children age.
... Renters of color often face racially targeted policies and practices when obtaining and maintaining housing, are more cost-burdened, and face higher rates of eviction compared to white renters (Lake, 2020). Eviction is stressful life event that can have lasting negative health impacts and fuel cycles of multigenerational poverty (Lundberg and Donnelly, 2019). Additionally, U.S. housing is not constructed to meet the needs of multigenerational families of color. ...
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COVID-19, the pandemic of highly contagious respiratory disease, presents a global public health emergency. Racial and ethnic minority groups in the USA are more likely to contract, be hospitalized with, and die from COVID-19 versus whites, highlighting glaring health disparities. Injustices such as the persistent issue of police brutality against Blacks in the USA, along with the racial disparities and inequities underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic, have brought renewed global focus to issues of social justice in the USA. Moreover, there is a need to examine how environmental racism intensifies the COVID-19 pandemic and illuminates racial inequities in exposure to environmental pollutants. This article describes environmental racism and its impact on people of color in the USA, critically examines how this practice elevates disease risk among racial and ethnic minorities already susceptible to COVID-19, and proposes recommendations to tackle this pervasive issue.
... Findings for gender have been more mixed; whereas women in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, were at greater individual-level risk of eviction than men (Desmond, 2012b(Desmond, , 2016, percentage of women residents was not a significant predictor of eviction prevalence at the neighborhood level (Desmond et al., 2013). Households with children are also at increased risk of eviction at both the individual (Desmond & Gershenson, 2017;Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019) and the neighborhood level (Desmond et al., 2013). Eviction prevalence has also been shown to be associated with economic disadvantage. ...
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The lack of sufficient affordable housing in Los Angeles, California burdens many renter households with the threat of an eviction. Research has identified individual- and neighborhood-level sociodemographic correlates of eviction, but the uneven distribution of sociodemographic characteristics and housing conditions across neighborhoods likely produces broader patterns of spatial clustering in eviction prevalence across local areas. We use spatial autoregressive models to explain the spatial concentration and spillover effects for two types of formal eviction filings—court-based and no-fault Ellis Act petitions—within and across census tracts in Los Angeles. Court-based filings show greater and more persistent spatial concentration, particularly in neighborhoods with higher percentages of Black residents. We find evidence of spatial correlation for both types of eviction, however, suggesting that identifying the spatial distribution of eviction prevalence across local areas is important to understanding how location shapes eviction risk in metropolitan areas.
... The 2013-2017 ACS estimates show that the average percentages of non-White renters are higher than the percentage of White renters by 13%, although about 72.8% of the population of Salt Lake County in 2015 was White. Compared with large-scale metropolitan areas-such as Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit and so on-used as cases in previous eviction studies (Desmond & Kimbro, 2015;Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019;Raymond et al., 2018), the spatial pattern of housing eviction locations in response to the contrasts among neighborhoods can be assumed to be different in Salt Lake County because of its unique demographic structure as a White-dominant community. ...
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There has been an increasing body of literature analyzing eviction in different cities and contexts in urban studies, public health, sociology, geography, and housing studies. Still, little has been known about the underlying spatial point process of how housing evictions are generated. After geocoding eviction filing cases in Salt Lake County in 2015, this study analyzed factors affecting the intensity of eviction using the inhomogeneous Poisson point process (IPP) model. The IPP model result identified demographic, economic, and housing covariates associated with the high intensity of eviction filings. This study also found a significant relationship between eviction filings and the built environment characteristics—such as proximity to central business district (CBD) and light rail transit stations, intersection density, and land use mix score. Particularly, this study found that the intensity of housing evictions is negatively associated with an increase in the distance to CBD when CBD was transformed into gentrified areas led by new high-end apartment constructions during the housing boom since 2000. The article ends with some recommendations for policymakers, including the implementation of an “anti-eviction zone” in CBD areas to reduce the high intensity of housing evictions led by new high-end apartment constructions.
... Therefore, families and neighborhoods receiving eviction filings are often in some of the most vulnerable economic circumstances. Recent research from parent-reported data estimates that at least 1 in 7 children born in large U.S. cities experienced an eviction because of nonpayment by age 16; among children living below the poverty line, this proportion increases to 1 in 4 (Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019). However, despite the prevalence of eviction among families with children and the acute and far-reaching consequences of this experience (Desmond, 2012b;Desmond & Kimbro, 2015), we know little about how evictions are related to child health and well-being. ...
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Each year, nearly 2.5 million evictions are filed in the United States. Recent research links evictions to a host of negative outcomes, but effects on child well-being are less studied, even as evictions are disproportionately experienced by families with children. In this article, we investigate the relationship between evictions and reports of child abuse and neglect, a key indicator of child well-being. Drawing on 5 years of block-group-level administrative data in Connecticut, we find that as eviction notices increase within a neighborhood, reports of maltreatment also increase, even net of zip-code-level factors and time-invariant block group characteristics. The relationship is driven by reports of neglect and is strongest among adolescents (children ages 10–17). These results suggest that mitigating housing insecurity has the potential to reduce child abuse and neglect reports.
... Eviction is a fairly frequent occurrence for renters in the United States, especially among lower income families. Approximately 15% of children in large U.S. cities born between 1998 and 2000 experienced at least one eviction before age 15 (Lundberg & Donnelly, 2018). One factor behind evictions is the mismatch between the need for low-cost rental units and the supply of such housing. ...
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Evictions cause substantial harm to lower income families. Housing subsidy might be expected to reduce eviction rates and provide greater stability. However, little research has examined the eviction rates of subsidized, affordable rental properties. We examine eviction filings for multifamily rental buildings in five-county metropolitan Atlanta, using a data set of eviction filings, property characteristics, and ownership information. We find that senior, subsidized multifamily properties have substantially lower eviction rates than market-rate properties do. A senior, subsidized multifamily rental building is expected to have an annual eviction rate that is 10.7 percentage points below that of a nonsenior, market-rate property; this result is significant (p < .01) and compares with a mean eviction filing rate of 16.3% (16.3 evictions per 100 rental units). On the other hand, a nonsenior subsidized building is expected to have an eviction rate that is 1.4 percentage points lower than a nonsenior market-rate building; this result is not statistically significant. We do not have data on the economic characteristics of tenants, and that may account for some of the relatively high eviction rates of the nonsenior-affordable properties. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and housing policy and practice.
... Indeed, secure, safe housing is consistently associated with psychosocial benefits (e.g., psychological and physical health, social capital) and well-being in historically vulnerable populations (Curley, 2010;Evans et al., 2000;Kushel et al., 2006). High mobility during childhood, defined by three or more moves in the first five years of life, has been linked to attention problems, and internalizing and externalizing symptoms, but only among low-income families (Ziol-Guest and McKenna, 2014) who are the most vulnerable to eviction (Lundberg and Donnelly, 2019). The impact of secure housing on the ontological security of resettled refugees may be particularly profound given histories of insecurity and forced displacement in their countries of origin. ...
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Refugees and immigrants resettled in high income countries often later experience a new phase of residential uncertainty in search of safe and secure housing. This study investigated the effect of past year housing stability on symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and exposure to neighborhood violence among a sample of 1st and 2nd generation Somali young adults (N = 198) living in urban areas in North America. In one year, 8.1% of the sample experienced a forced move and 20.7% of the sample moved voluntarily. Discrimination, neighborhood violence, economic insecurity, and interpersonal conflict precipitated forced moves. Forced moves were associated with worsening PTSD symptomology over one year, while voluntary moves were associated with improvements in symptoms. The current study provides evidence of the importance of safe, stable housing for the mental health of young adult immigrants.
... In a 2002 birth cohort in California, lower levels of maternal education and Medicaid as the primary payer for delivery were associated children under age 18 years, and families with children made up one third of the total homeless population (Henry et al., 2017). Recent research also indicates that families with children are more likely to experience eviction compared to those without children and that one in four children in families living below the FPL experience eviction prior to age 15 years (Desmond et al., 2013;Lundberg & Donnelly, 2019). As such, housing stress represents a key form of material hardship for U.S. families. ...
Article
Child maltreatment is a significant public health issue in the United States. Understanding key risk factors for child maltreatment is critical to informing effective prevention. Poverty is an established risk factor for child maltreatment. However, recent research indicates that material hardship (i.e., difficulties meeting basic needs) may serve as a more direct measure of the way in which poverty affects daily life. One form of material hardship that is common among families is housing stress. Previous reviews have summarized the existing literature regarding the association of economic insecurity with child maltreatment, but no reviews have synthesized and critically evaluated the literature specific to the association of various types of housing stress with child maltreatment. We conducted a systematic search of multiple electronic databases to identify peer-reviewed studies conducted in the U.S. regarding the association of housing stress with child maltreatment. We identified 21 articles that used nine distinct measures of housing stress including homelessness or eviction, homeless or emergency shelter stays, foreclosure filing, housing instability, inadequate housing, physical housing risk, living doubled-up, housing unaffordability, and composite housing stress indicators. Overall, results from this body of literature indicate that housing stress is associated with an increased likelihood of caregiver or child self-reported maltreatment, child protective services (CPS) reports, investigated and substantiated CPS reports, out-of-home placements, and maltreatment death. Additional theory-driven research is needed to further our understanding of the contribution of specific types of housing stress to risk for specific types of maltreatment.
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Sociologists have shown how displacement reproduces inequality among U.S. renters. Less is known about the experiences of renters prior to displacement, or how the trade-offs that renters adopt to avoid moves also stratify families. This article addresses this gap by examining how renters with few housing alternatives manage landlord neglect in routine maintenance. Using interviews with 131 non-Hispanic white and Latina/o, low- and middle-income renters living in Los Angeles, I find that unaffordable rental markets embed disadvantaged families, particularly low-income Latina/o immigrants, into substandard indoor living environments. Unable or reluctant to move, renters endure a process that I call negotiating neglect, which encompasses decision making around repair requests, following up with repair delays, investing personal funds into maintenance, and managing the health consequences of disrepair. Negotiating neglect demands substantial time, cognitive labor, and, at times, financial resources, and for some families, it is a chronic stressor. Taken together, these findings advance prior research on how unaffordable rental markets widen inequalities among families.
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Evictions are commonplace in the United States, and their negative consequences are broad and severe. However, research on evictions to date has focused primarily on urban areas, and thus has not addressed the impact evictions have on rural renters. This paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of evictions in rural communities, where the number of renters has been increasing in recent decades. We use Eviction Lab's national eviction database to study the approximately 220,000 evictions filed in rural counties each year. While the majority of rural evictions affect families with a white head of household (57 percent in 2010), eviction filing rates are four times higher among rural Black renters than among rural white renters. Eviction filing rates are highest in heavily Black counties in the rural southeast. While eviction filings are somewhat lower in rural majority‐Hispanic counties, these communities experience low‐quality informal housing and overcrowding. Eviction rates are also higher in rural counties with higher rent burdens and where more households include children.
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We assess the relationship between gentrification and a key form of displacement: eviction. Drawing on over six million court cases filed in 72 of the largest metropolitan areas across the United States between 2000 and 2016, we show that most evictions occurred in low-income neighborhoods that did not gentrify. Over time, eviction rates decreased more in gentrifying neighborhoods than in comparable low-income neighborhoods. Results were robust to multiple specifications and alternative measures of gentrification. The findings of this study imply that focusing on gentrifying neighborhoods as the primary site of displacement risks overlooking most instances of forced removal. Disadvantaged communities experienced displacement pressures when they underwent gentrification and when they did not. Eviction is not a passing trend in low-income neighborhoods—one that comes and goes as gentrification accelerates and decelerates—but a durable component of neighborhood disadvantage.
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In this study, the authors draw on a unique dataset of eviction filings in Washington, D.C., over a six-year period, merged with building ownership data from the District of Columbia Office of Tax and Revenue, to better understand patterns of serial filing, a practice whereby landlords file for eviction on a single household in a single unit multiple times. The authors create an empirical typology of serial filing chains to categorize the patterns observed in the dataset. They then test a series of hypotheses about the relationship between landlord portfolio size and serial filings. Households that are filed against in buildings owned by larger landlords are substantially more likely to experience serial eviction filing, and longer serial filing chains, relative to households living in buildings owned by smaller landlords. These results offer the first empirical evidence documenting multiple patterns of serial eviction filing and underscore how landlord filing strategies differ by portfolio size.
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Life-course epidemiologists have developed sophisticated models for how exposures throughout life—from gestation to old age—shape health, sometimes years after the exposure occurred. The field, however, has been slow to adopt robust causal inference methods, including quasi-experimental designs. This reflects, at least in part, a tension between ( a) study designs that maximize our ability to make causal claims and ( b) exposure operationalizations that correspond with life-course theories. In this narrative review, we attempt to mitigate that tension. We first discuss the unique challenges for causal inference in life-course epidemiology. We then outline how quasi-experimental methods have already contributed to testing life-course theories, as well as the limitations of the quasi-experimental methods therein. We close with solutions that bridge the gap between modern developments in causal inference and life-course epidemiology, including redefined estimands to maximize public health impact; marginal structural and structural nested models; longitudinal instrumental variables approaches; leveraging new data linkages, such as with detailed residential histories; and triangulation across methods, including adopting a pluralistic approach to causal inference. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, Volume 5 is December 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
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Importance: Millions of rental evictions occur in the United States each year, disproportionately affecting households with children. Increasing attention has been paid to the impact of evictions on child health outcomes. Objective: To synthesize and assess studies examining the associations of eviction exposure with infant and child health outcomes. Evidence review: For this systematic review without meta-analysis, a database search was performed using PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO, through September 25, 2022. Included studies were peer-reviewed quantitative studies examining an association between exposure to eviction and at least 1 health outcome, both before age 18 years, including prenatal exposures and perinatal outcomes. This study followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) reporting guideline. Data were analyzed from March 3 to December 7, 2022. Findings: Database searches identified 266 studies, and 11 studies met inclusion criteria. Six studies examined associations between prenatal eviction and birth outcomes, such as gestational age, and each found that eviction was significantly associated with at least 1 adverse birth outcome. Five studies investigated other childhood outcomes, including neuropsychological test scores, parent-rated child health, lead testing rates, and body mass index, and among these 5 studies, 4 reported an association between eviction and adverse child health outcomes. Direct experience of eviction or residence in a neighborhood with more evictions was associated with adverse perinatal outcomes in 6 studies, higher neurodevelopmental risk in 2 studies, worse parent-rated child health in 2 studies, and less lead testing in 1 study. Study designs and methods were largely robust. Conclusions and relevance: In this systematic review without meta-analysis of the association between evictions and child health outcomes, evidence demonstrated the deleterious associations of eviction with a range of developmental periods and domains. In the context of a rental housing affordability crisis, ongoing racial disparities in evictions, and continuing harm to millions of families, health care practitioners and policy makers have an integral role to play in supporting safe, stable housing for all.
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Eviction filing rates have declined in many large cities in the United States. Existing scholarship on eviction, which focuses on discrete tenant-landlord relationships, has few explanations for this decline. I consider whether community organizing by nonprofit organizations shapes the social organization of communities and causes landlords to file fewer eviction filings. In cities where tenant and anti-poverty organizing has become common, community-oriented nonprofit organizations advocate for disadvantaged communities and help residents avoid poverty. Community organizing has rarely been studied as a predictor of housing security among low-income tenants, despite studies of how community organizing shapes the use of property in wealthy neighborhoods. I estimate the causal effect of community organizations on eviction filing rates between 2000 and 2016 using longitudinal data and a strategy to account for the endogeneity of nonprofits and eviction. Evidence from year-to-year models in 75 large cities spanning sixteen years estimate that an addition of ten community nonprofits in a city of 100,000 residents is associated with a ten percent reduction in eviction filing. This effect is comparable to the effect of community organizations on murder and is roughly a third of the association between eviction and concentrated disadvantage.
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BACKGROUND Families with versus without children are at greater eviction risk. Eviction is a perinatal, pediatric, and adult health concern. Most studies evaluate only formal evictions. METHODS Using cross-sectional surveys of 26 441 caregiver or young child (<48 months) dyads from 2011 to 2019 in emergency departments (EDs) and primary care clinics, we investigated relationships of 5 year history of formal (court-involved) and informal (not court-involved) evictions with caregiver and child health, history of hospitalizations, hospital admission from the ED on the day of the interview, and housing-related and other material hardships. RESULTS 3.9% of 26 441 caregivers reported 5 year eviction history (eviction), of which 57.0% were formal evictions. After controlling for covariates, we found associations were minimally different between formal versus informal evictions and were, therefore, combined. Compared to no evictions, evictions were associated with 1.43 (95% CI: 1.17–1.73), 1.55 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.32–1.82), and 1.24 (95% CI: 1.01–1.53) times greater odds of child fair or poor health, developmental risk, and hospital admission from the ED, respectively, as well as adverse caregiver and hardship outcomes. Adjusting separately for household income and for housing-related hardships in sensitivity analyses did not significantly alter results, although odds ratios were attenuated. Hospital admission from the ED was no longer significant. CONCLUSIONS Demonstrated associations between eviction and health and hardships support broad initiatives, such as housing-specific policies, income-focused benefits, and social determinants of health screening and community connections in health care settings. Such multifaceted efforts may decrease formal and informal eviction incidence and mitigate potential harmful associations for very young children and their families.
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Recent events have brought attention to the millions of Americans who struggle to find and pay for housing. Housing has historically been of interest to sociologists, but it has long been subsumed within research on crime, residential mobility, and neighborhoods. In the past decade, there has been a surge of scholarship in an emerging sociology of housing that focuses on housing insecurity, forced moves, landlords, shared housing arrangements, and the stratification effects of housing policy. While other fields typically define housing insecurity as affordability, this new literature shows how housing insecurity is not only rooted in financial constraints but also situated within social relationships that create or dissolve housing arrangements, and is exacerbated or remediated by supply-side institutions and policy. This work makes clear that housing insecurity is not a one-time discrete event but a dynamic process, and that sociologists can contribute not only to measuring housing insecurity but also to understanding the social forces that shape it.
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This paper reconsiders transport inequities through the lens of environmental racism. Based on participant observations of 1972 rural-to-urban migrants at 76 worksites and 25 residential communities in five cities in the Yangtze Delta Region, China, we identified two main challenges facing migrants experiencing ethnic discrimination during Covid-19. First, they were more likely to experience housing eviction and, consequently, bear heavier transport burdens when moving. Second, they were more likely to face difficulties when returning to the cities, such as repeated quarantine and displacement, long-time drifting on the highway and transport-related job uncertainty. Although the long-term effects of these policies on migrants’ everyday activity-travel behaviour may be limited, their experiences during the early phase of Covid-19 had a significant impact on their Spring Festival homecoming the following year. Regionally targeted transport policies to prevent Covid-19 have fuelled ethnic discrimination by officially classifying people from some provinces as “dangerous”. Moreover, transport policies favoured some ethnic groups over others, contributing to environmental racism and exacerbating transport inequity.
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Eviction has been studied almost exclusively as an urban phenomenon. The growing suburbanization of poverty in the United States, however, provides new cause to analyze the prevalence and correlates of displacement beyond cities. This study analyzes urban-suburban disparities in eviction rates across 71 large metropolitan areas. We show that eviction is a common experience in suburbs as well as cities. Urban eviction rates exceed suburban rates in most cases, but in one in six metropolitan areas experienced higher eviction rates in the suburbs. Multilevel models show that key correlates of eviction—especially poverty and median rent—influence eviction patterns differently in urban and suburban contexts. We explore variations in urban-suburban disparities through case studies of Milwaukee, Seattle, and Miami. Metropolitan areas with larger shifts toward suburban poverty, more expensive urban rental markets, and more segregated suburbs experience more suburban evictions.
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Millions of families in the United States are economically vulnerable: one shock can lead to hardship. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the association between acute healthcare utilization – emergency room visits or hospitalizations – and subsequent housing hardships, such as being evicted for financial reasons. Further, we explore whether this association differs by who in the family utilized the care and whether perceived social support protects against hardship when these experiences occur. Using lagged dependent variable regression models, we find that families that visited the emergency room or were hospitalized, regardless if it was a child or parent with this experience, were five percentage points more likely to experience any housing hardship than families that did not use acute care. Among families in which a child utilized acute care, perceived social support buffered the impact of using acute care. That perceived social support is associated with a lower likelihood of housing hardship among families that experienced acute care utilization for a child, but not parent, suggests that social support may be able to offset the challenges arising from children’s, but not adults’, use of acute care. In the face of economic precarity, informal safety nets may be insufficient to reduce the impact of acute care utilization on housing hardships.
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Introduction Although growing evidence links residential evictions to health, little work has examined connections between eviction and healthcare utilization or access. In this study, eviction records are linked to Medicaid claims to estimate short-term associations between eviction and healthcare utilization, as well as Medicaid disenrollment. Methods New York City eviction records from 2017 were linked to New York State Medicaid claims, with 1,300 evicted patients matched to 261,855 non-evicted patients with similar past healthcare utilization, demographics, and neighborhoods. Outcomes included patients’ number of acute and ambulatory care visits, healthcare spending, Medicaid disenrollment, and pharmaceutical prescription fills during 6 months of follow-up. Coarsened exact matching was used to strengthen causal inference in observational data. Weighted generalized linear models were then fit, including censoring weights. Analyses were conducted in 2019–2021. Results Eviction was associated with 63% higher odds of losing Medicaid coverage (95% CI=1.38, 1.92, p<0.001), fewer pharmaceutical prescription fills (incidence rate ratio=0.68, 95% CI=0.52, 0.88, p=0.004), and lower odds of generating any healthcare spending (OR=0.72, 95% CI=0.61, 0.85, p<0.001). However, among patients who generated any spending, average spending was 20% higher for those evicted (95% CI=1.03, 1.40, p=0.017), such that evicted patients generated more spending on balance. Marginally significant estimates suggested associations with increased acute, and decreased ambulatory, care visits. Conclusions Results suggest that eviction drives increased healthcare spending while disrupting healthcare access. Given previous research that Medicaid expansion lowered eviction rates, eviction and Medicaid disenrollment may operate cyclically, accumulating disadvantage. Preventing evictions may improve access to care and lower Medicaid costs.
Article
We describe the promise of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) for developmental researchers. FFCWS is a birth cohort study of 4,898 children born in 1998–2000 in large US cities. This prospective national study collected data on children and parents at birth and during infancy (age 1), toddlerhood (age 3), early childhood (age 5), middle childhood (age 9), adolescence (age 15), and, in progress, young adulthood (age 22). Though FFCWS was created to understand the lives of unmarried parent families, its comprehensive data on parents, children, and contexts can be used to explore many other developmental questions. We identify six opportunities for developmentalists: ( a) analyzing developmental trajectories, ( b) identifying the importance of the timing of exposures for later development, ( c) documenting bidirectional influences on development, ( d) understanding development in context, ( e) identifying biological moderators and mechanisms, and ( f) using an urban-born cohort that is large, diverse, and prospective.
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Eviction is concentrated in poor communities of color, and studies indicate eviction may affect social processes. Community and crime literature demonstrates that structural factors, such as socio-economic status and racial composition, are linked with crime and that social processes protect neighborhoods from crime. Therefore, eviction is likely concentrated in neighborhoods vulnerable to crime, but the connection between eviction and neighborhood violent crime has not yet been examined. Using data from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab National Database, the National Neighborhood Crime Study 2, and the Boston Neighborhood Survey, this Boston-based study is a first step in filling this knowledge gap. Findings indicate that eviction is positively associated with crime and partially explains why crime is concentrated in disadvantaged communities of color.
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A lack of affordable housing is a pressing issue for many low‐income American families and can lead to eviction from their homes. Housing assistance programs to address this problem include public housing and other assistance, including vouchers, through which a government agency offsets the cost of private market housing. This paper assesses whether the receipt of either category of assistance reduces the probability that a family will be evicted from their home in the subsequent six years. Because no randomized trial has assessed these effects, we use observational data and formalize the conditions under which a causal interpretation is warranted. Families living in public housing experience less eviction conditional on pre‐treatment variables. We argue that this evidence points toward a causal conclusion that assistance, particularly public housing, protects families from eviction.
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Housing-related hardships, ranging from an inability to pay full housing costs to being evicted, are common experiences for families in the U.S. Despite the frequency of these hardships, little is known about their relationships with adolescent behaviors. The current paper uses longitudinal data on births in large U.S. cities from all six waves of the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study to explore the association between childhood experiences of housing hardships and delinquent behaviors in adolescence. About 60% of the sample experiences housing hardship at one or more waves. Inabilities to meet housing costs are common among the sample: over 40% are unable to pay their full rent or mortgage payment. Results from multivariate regression and residualized change models indicate that children who experience any housing hardship are more likely to engage in delinquent behaviors than children who do not experience hardship. Exposure to higher average levels of hardship and more waves of hardship are both associated with increased delinquency. Childhood poverty does not moderate the relationship between housing hardship and delinquency suggesting that housing hardship is associated with delinquent behaviors for poor and non-poor children alike. This research builds on existing literature highlighting the importance of examining hardship as a measure of family wellbeing. It also suggests that preventing common housing-related hardships can be beneficial for youth behavioral outcomes.
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In the United States, soaring rent burdens and a dearth of affordable housing leave millions of renters at risk of eviction. The eviction epidemic is particularly pronounced in California where advocates estimate that approximately 500,000 renters are evicted annually. Research has looked at individual‐level determinants of evictions, but we know much less about the spatial dynamics of eviction and associations across neighborhoods. This is largely because data on evictions are sporadic and incomplete. We utilize data from American Information Research Services, Inc., that consists of publicly available California eviction court records for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego Counties between 2005 and 2015. We append eviction locations to two waves of the American Community Survey (ACS) to better understand the connection between concentrated disadvantage and neighborhood change and eviction. We find that evictions are much more likely to occur in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates and/or shares of African‐American individuals than in neighborhoods with rising rent or income levels. These findings suggest that court‐based evictions are much more likely to be found in areas with low‐income households and racial minorities than in areas experiencing rapid neighborhood change as evidenced by rising rents or changing demographics.
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Eviction affects a substantial share of U.S. children, but its effects on child health are largely unknown. Our objectives were to examine how eviction relates to 1) children's health and sociodemographic characteristics at birth, 2) neighborhood poverty and food security at age 5, and 3) obesity in later childhood and adolescence. We analyzed data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal cohort of children born in 20 large U.S. cities. Children who lived in rental housing with known eviction histories and measured outcomes were included. We compared maternal and infant health and sociodemographic characteristics at the time of the child's birth. We then characterized the associations between eviction and neighborhood poverty and food security at age 5 and obesity at ages 5, 9, and 15 using log binomial regression with inverse probability of treatment and censoring weights. Of the 2556 children included in objective 1, 164 (6%) experienced eviction before age 5. Children who experienced eviction had lower household income and maternal education and were more likely to be born to mothers who were unmarried, smoked during pregnancy, and had mental health problems. Evicted and non-evicted children were equally likely to experience high neighborhood poverty at age 5 (prevalence ratio (PR) = 1.03, 95% CI 0.82, 1.29) but had an increased prevalence of low food security (PR = 2.16, 95% CI 1.46, 3.19). Obesity prevalence did not differ at age 5 (PR = 1.01; 95% CI 0.58, 1.75), 9 (PR = 1.08; 95% CI 0.715, 1.55); or 15 (PR = 1.05; 95% CI 0.51, 2.18). In conclusion, children who went on to experience eviction showed signs of poor health and socioeconomic disadvantage already at birth. Eviction in early childhood was not associated with children's likelihood of neighborhood poverty, suggesting that eviction may not qualitatively change children's neighborhood conditions in this disadvantaged sample. Though we saw evidence supporting an association with low child food security at age 5, we did not find eviction to be associated with obesity in later childhood and adolescence.
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Have the magnitude and correlates of residential displacement changed during the early twenty-first century in response to the foreclosure and eviction crises and escalating natural hazard disasters? We consider this possibility against the backdrop of past research on other causes of displacement. Our components approach to the concept encourages definitions of varied emphasis and scope. These definitions are operationalized with reason-for-move data from seven waves of the American Housing Survey conducted between 2001 and 2013. We document fluctuations in the relatively small share of mobile households who move involuntarily but detect no clear upward trend over time. Analysis of householder characteristics associated with displacement indicates that many longstanding disparities between advantaged and disadvantaged statuses persist, although they tend to be modest in size. Paradoxically, such patterns may contribute to a perception of displacement as random or unpredictable, further heightening public concern about the issue.
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Multiple imputation is a tool for parameter estimation and inference with partially observed data, which is used increasingly widely in medical and social research. When the data to be imputed are correlated or have a multilevel structure — repeated observations on patients, school children nested in classes within schools within educational districts — the imputation model needs to include this structure. Here we introduce our joint modelling package for multiple imputation of multilevel data, jomo, which uses a multivariate normal model fitted by Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Compared to previous packages for multilevel imputation, e.g. pan, jomo adds the facility to (i) handle and impute categorical variables using a latent normal structure, (ii) impute level-2 variables, and (iii) allow for cluster-specific covariance matrices, including the option to give them an inverse-Wishart distribution at level 2. The package uses C routines to speed up the computations and has been extensively validated in simulation studies both by ourselves and others
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BACKGROUND The likelihood that a US child will live with a grandparent has increased over time. In 2015, nearly 12% of children lived with a grandparent. However, the likelihood that a child will ever live with a grandparent is not known. OBJECTIVE We calculate the cumulative and age-specific probabilities of coresidence with grandparents during childhood. We stratify our analyses by types of grandparentgrandchild living arrangements (grandfamilies and three-generation households) and by race and ethnicity. METHODS We use two data sets - the pooled 2010-2015 American Community Surveys (ACS) and the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY-97) - and produce estimates using life tables techniques. RESULTS Results indicate that nearly 30% of US children ever coreside with grandparents. Both three-generation and grandfamily living arrangements are more prevalent among racial and ethnic minority groups, with three-generation coresidence particularly common among Asian children. Black children are nearly two times as likely to ever live in a grandfamily as compared to Hispanic and white children, respectively. Children are much more likely to experience grandparental coresidence during their first year of life than in any other year. CONCLUSION This paper suggests that the magnitude of grandparental coresidence is greater than previously known, particularly in early childhood. CONTRIBUTION This is the first study to calculate age-specific and cumulative probabilities of coresidence with grandparents during the whole childhood. Doing so allows us to better craft public policies and guide new research on family complexity.
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Eviction lab national database: Version 1.0
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RStan: The R interface to Stan
  • Stan Development Team
Stan Development Team. (2017). RStan: The R interface to stan. R package version 2.16.2. <http://mc-stan.org>.
Material hardships during the Great Recession: Findings from the Michigan Recession and Recovery Study
  • A Gould-Werth
  • K S Seefeldt
Extended measures of well-being: Living conditions in the United States: 1998 (Current Population Reports: Household Economic Studies Series P70-87)
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Evicted: Poverty and profit in the American city
  • M Desmond
Fragile Families: Sample and design
  • Reichman
A weakly informative default prior distribution for logistic and other regression models
  • Gelman