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Housing Crisis and Family Well-being: Examining the Effects of Foreclosure on Families

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Working Paper Number SEHSD-WP2015-07

Abstract

The housing market crash in the mid-2000s was characterized by unusually high rates of mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures. Thus, many families faced the prospect of losing their homes .In this paper, I use a unique dataset linking the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation with individual foreclosure event records from RealtyTrac to examine the effects of foreclosure on changes in family well-being. Results from random-effects models suggest that families that experience foreclosure have lower incomes, experience greater hardship and food insecurity, have higher odds of accessing the public safety net and were less likely to receive support from private safety nets than their counterparts. Further, changes in foreclosure status are associated with reduced economic well-being, increased hardship and food insecurity.

Page Last Revised - October 8, 2021
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