Experiment Characteristics
Why were the outcomes of older children in MTO slightly negative (although not statistically significant)?
Hint: two-word answer
Disruption effects
What criteria must be met for an individual to be considered married in the study?
"We define an individual as married if an individual files a tax return as a married individual in a given year."
What are two of the research's main findings?
(no specific stats needed)
Children who moved to lower-poverty areas when they were young (below age 13) are:
- more likely to attend college and have substantially higher incomes as adults.
- live in better neighborhoods themselves as adults
- less likely to become single parents themselves
- benefits of the initial MTO voucher treatment will persist into the following generation.
Even if the MTO experiment is successful, there is no change in cost for the government to run the program.
False.
"(...) higher earnings of children who moved to low-poverty areas at young ages increases tax revenue, reducing the cost of the program to the government."
(...) because only ...% of families with young children that were offered the experimental voucher actually moved
a)15 b)23 c)30 d)48
(d)
What were the 3 groups in the experiment?
(i) Experimental group: received housing vouchers that subsidized private-market rents and could initially (for the first year) only be used in census tracts with 1 990 poverty rates below 10%
2) Section 8 group: received regular housing vouchers without any MTO-specific relocation constraint
3) Control group: received no assistance through MTO
What is a critical characteristic of the experimental design of MTO that makes it an unusual/important research project?
Random assignment, control and treatment groups
What is 1 policy implication of this study?
- Vouchers that require families to move to low-poverty areas.
- Target vouchers to families with young children.
There was a disparity in the number of observations between the younger and older groups, but this was addressed using advanced statistical methods.
False.
"This split at age 13 yields approximately the same number of observations for the younger and older groups for analyses of outcomes such as earnings in early adulthood."
Older children who received the experimental voucher were also roughly ...% less likely to attend college than older children in the control group.
a) 2.4 b) 12.1 c) 10.2 d) 4.3
(d)
List 2 characteristics of the group who participated in the MTO experiment.
Hint: summary statistics
We talked about this bf (i hope)
Why did previous research fail in finding the results we see in Chetty et al.?
"(...)partly because of these data limitations, prior analyses measured earnings at very early ages, between the ages of 16-21."
"The childhood exposure effects we document here were not apparent in prior studies because they did not have adequate long-term data to observe the emergence of MTO's impacts on earnings and other outcomes in adulthood for children who moved at young ages."
What was the main result of the heterogeneity analysis (across different groups and places)?
"The main lesson of the heterogeneity analysis is that the long-term benefits of childhood exposure to lower-poverty neighborhoods are highly robust across genders, racial groups, and geographic locations."
A different voucher was not the only thing that differentiated the experimental group from the other two groups.
Hint: was there anything else they received?
True.
"Those in the experimental group also received additional housing-mobility counseling from a local nonprofit organization."
By how much does moving to a lower-poverty area when young (at age eight on average) using the experimental voucher increases total pretax lifetime earnings?
a) 200,000 b) 300,000 c) 400,000 d) 100,000
(b)
Correct: $302,000.
What were the five cities where MTO took place
(no cheating)
Boston, Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago
What is the critical age below which children must move to benefit from a better neighborhood?
There is none!
But younger children, yes.
What is the speculative explanation as to why younger boys who moved to lower-poverty neighborhoods were doing well economically and academically in their early adulthood despite having had worse risky behaviors and educational outcomes in teenage years compared to the control group?
(short vs medium-term outcomes)
- Teenager misdeeds may have adverse consequences
- Second chances in nicer neighborhoods may be more available.
Previous research found that there were gender disparities between the outcomes children in the MTO treatment group.
True
"Prior work has found that the MTO treatments had more positive effects on female children than on male children in terms of mental health, physical health, risky behaviors, and educational outcomes during adolescence."
Out of the households who received the standard voucher, how many moved?
a) 66 b) 46 c) 56 d) 76
(a)
How does household income differ from individual earnings?
(3 possible answers)
Household income expands upon our individual earnings measure by including
- spouse's income (for married tax filers)
-unemployment insurance income
- social security and disability (SSDI) income
What is the broader issue with offering Section 8 housing to low-income families?
"The MTO experiment shows that moving families who started out in high-poverty public housing projects to lower-poverty areas has substantial long-term benefits for children. However, the marginal Section 8 voucher may not induce such a move; instead, recent evidence suggests that Section 8 housing vouchers are frequently used to rent better housing within the same neighborhood rather than move to better neighborhoods."
Findings imply that MTO treatment effects on children's outcomes arise from improvements in family income after moving to a new place.
False.
"(...)MTO treatment effects on children's outcomes do not arise from improvements in family income. Instead, they are likely to be driven by direct effects of neighborhood environments on the children or to be mediated by parental health and stress, which were improved by the MTO treatments."
Girls whose families moved using the experimental voucher when they were young are ... percent less likely to become single mothers.
a) 26 b) 32 c) 17 d) 51
(a)