Housing Instability and Adult Wellbeing

Past and on-going racial discrimination has produced large disparities in access to housing and left Black and Latino households uniquely vulnerable to housing instability. Increasingly, scholars of housing and poverty posit that housing instability may not only be a social problem in itself, but may also be a causal mechanism that further disadvantages the adults who experience it. Yet, to date, little research has rigorously examined this hypothesis. We will conceptualize housing instability broadly and investigate which forms of housing instability, if any, appear to affect adults’ wellbeing across three domains: employment, health, and family structure. Using multiple methods, we will provide the most rigorous evidence to date of whether and how housing instability may affect subsequent wellbeing, and we will explore how these effects might differ by race and ethnicity or by adults’ propensity to experience housing instability. By documenting racial differences in exposure to housing instability and identifying plausibly causal effects of housing instability on wellbeing, this project will contribute to a better understanding of the role of housing instability in reinforcing already substantial racial inequalities in the U.S. This analysis will provide the foundation for a broader research agenda on housing instability examining specific forms of housing instability and outcomes, the mechanisms linking them, and their implications for inequality.