Childhood Housing Tenure and Young Adult Educational Outcomes: Evidence from Sibling Comparisons in Norway

Abstract

We investigate how childhood housing careers affect young adults’ secondary school and college educational attainments, focusing on the role played by cumulative exposure to homeownership. We analyze Norwegian census and administrative data using extensive controls for youth, household, housing, mobility, and neighborhood characteristics and employ, as a methodological first in this domain, family fixed effects. We find that, compared to an otherwise-comparable sibling experiencing identical residential contexts, a youth who lived one more year in a home owned by the parent(s) had a 1.4 percentage-point higher probability of completing high school by age 21 and a 1.7 percentage-point higher probability of enrolling in college by age 20. These effects arise from homeownership per se, independent of its relationship with dwelling type, mobility, or neighborhood.