University of Wisconsin - Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty

The How Housing Matters to Families and Communities competitive research program is a multi-year effort to build a body of evidence to guide U.S. housing policy and practice. The collapse of the housing market combined with the Great Recession and sluggish recovery have had substantial consequences for the fiscal health of the nation’s cities. This grant to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty will be used to investigate how cities’ fiscal decisions in response to the pressures engendered by the housing market collapse affect their ability to promote safe and attractive neighborhoods and well-functioning housing markets.

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is a leading university-based research center that focuses on the causes and consequences of poverty and social inequality in the United States. In 2010, the Institute received a grant through the Foundation’s How Housing Matters research competition to study the effect of federal and state income support policies on homeownership stability and child maltreatment. This grant supports the integration into the study of previously- unavailable state administrative data, which will allow researchers to more precisely establish the direct effects of housing stress and foreclosure on involvement with the child protective services system.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty is an interdisciplinary research center focused on the causes and consequences of U.S. poverty and social inequality. Research conducted under a prior grant showed that housing voucher receipt had a short-term negative effect on earnings, but that those negative effects diminish over time. The University will use this grant to explore why this analysis found a negative effect while other studies have found no effect, and will explore the factors that cause negative earnings effects to diminish over time.

To research the effect of federal and state income support policies on homeownership stability and child maltreatment (over three years).

To conduct a benefit-cost analysis of rental subsidies and economic independence among low-income families, as part of the How Housing Matters to Families and Communities competitive grant program (over two years).