Policy Options Abundant to Improve Housing Affordability for Families

Vanessa Brown CalderThere are many policies that reduce the supply of goods and services that parents and children need, and therefore lead to rising costs for family necessities like food, housing, clothing, transportation, and childcare. Policies including tariffs, regulations, and licensing rules reduce affordability, while the value of parents ’ wages erodes due to historically high inflation.However, housing arguably constitutes the most substantial and most inescapable financial costs associated with raising a child. U.S. Department of Agriculture figures indicate that for families, the cost of housing is the largest expense associated with raising a child, with estimates suggesting housing accounts for26 to 33 percent of child rearing expenses, which translates to approximately $3,000 to $7,000 annually (2022 dollars).The cost of housing as a proportion of overall childrearing expenses grows as income falls, so that for families with the lowest incomes the cost of housing constitutes a more substantial portion of childrearing costs. Moreover, although housing affordability metrics arguably overcount affordability problems due to flawed or missing income survey data, using a traditional affordability metric Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) dataindicates that around 30 percent of children in 2019 lived in households with a housing cost burden over the traditional 30 percent affordability threshold.During the pandemic, the costs of homeownership and ren...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 30, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Vanessa Brown Calder Source Type: blogs