Like Father Like Son? Social Engineering and Intergenerational Mobility in Housing Consumption

Using Singapore's large-scale public housing program as a quasi-natural experiment, we demonstrate that affordable public housing significantly enhances intergenerational mobility in housing consumption for families with lower socioeconomic status. By matching 147,560 parentchild pairs with housing transaction prices from 1995 to 2018, we identify three intergenerational mobility patterns: upward mobility for children from families with lower socioeconomic status, high persistence for children born to higher status parents, and downward mobility for the rest. Using the introduction of a new public housing scheme to construct a Difference-inDifferences strategy, we estimate that children born in disadvantaged families but whose parents benefit from affordable public housing have a 11.2% higher likelihood of surpassing their parents' housing status. A possible mechanism for this effect lies in an alleviation of budget constraints, which in turn facilitates greater investment in the human capital of children. Our results provide insight into a new pathway to enhance intergenerational mobility and ameliorate inequality through the provision of affordable housing.