The effects of childhood exposure to housing provision: evidence from a radical reform in Britain

Matteo Sandi and Stephen Machin, LSE, Richard Disney, IFS and John Gathergood, University of Nottingham

(Project no. 2000581)

Right to Buy (RTB), a largescale housing policy by which incumbent tenants in public housing could buy their properties at heavily subsidised prices, increased the homeownership rate in the UK by over 10 per cent between 1980 and the late 1990s. Using the ONS Longitudinal Study, this project will study the impact of childhood exposure to RTB on their educational and professional trajectories. The research will provide evidence of a potential novel means by which gentrification, and housing provision, may contribute to increase human capital accumulation and improve the educational and professional trajectories of children born in low income settings.