Residential mobility and persistently depressed voting among disadvantaged adults in a large housing experiment

This study examines the impact of residential mobility on electoral participation among the poor by matching data from Moving to Opportunity, a US-based multicity housing-mobility experiment, with nationwide individual voter data. Nearly all participants in the experiment were Black and Hispanic fam...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 121; no. 20; p. e2306287121
Main Authors: Knight, David Jonathan, Zhang, Baobao
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 14.05.2024
Subjects:
Adult
Black or African American
Depression - epidemiology
Female
Hispanic or Latino - statistics & numerical data
Housing - statistics & numerical data
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Population Dynamics
Poverty
Public Housing - statistics & numerical data
United States
Voting
Vulnerable Populations - statistics & numerical data
United States
racial inequality
social inequality
residential mobility
housing
voter participation
ISSN:1091-6490, 1091-6490
Online Access:Get more information
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Summary:This study examines the impact of residential mobility on electoral participation among the poor by matching data from Moving to Opportunity, a US-based multicity housing-mobility experiment, with nationwide individual voter data. Nearly all participants in the experiment were Black and Hispanic families who originally lived in high-poverty public housing developments. Notably, the study finds that receiving a housing voucher to move to a low-poverty neighborhood decreased adult participants' voter participation for nearly two decades-a negative impact equal to or outpacing that of the most effective get-out-the-vote campaigns in absolute magnitude. This finding has important implications for understanding residential mobility as a long-run depressant of voter turnout among extremely low-income adults.
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ISSN:1091-6490
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.2306287121