A Nebraska economist is exploring how evictions affect children over the long term — research that could inform new policies aimed at tackling housing instability across the United States.

Daniel Tannenbaum, Georgia Lord Thompson and Jim Thompson Chair in Business and associate professor of economics, recently received a $430,587 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program to support his five-year project.

Tannenbaum will work with eviction data from several American cities, including New York and Chicago. The work will explore several questions: What are the economic and social costs of eviction on children? Does short-term housing assistance produce long-term gains in housing and economic stability? Are preventive approaches to homelessness effective in the short and long run? Can the eviction process itself be modified to reduce homelessness?

“Housing instability is something that many Americans face, especially lower-income Americans,” Tannenbaum said.

About 3 million Americans each year face eviction, most of them tenants who fall behind on their rent.

“Eviction court records do not contain information beyond the court case,” Tannenbaum said. “Understanding the impact of eviction on households requires building new datasets that follow individuals after the court process is over.”

There is especially limited evidence on how eviction affects children because they’re not named in housing records, and there’s a lack of administrative data linking them to short- and long-term outcomes. The NSF funding will enable Tannenbaum’s team to create newly linked datasets to determine, for example, how children’s performance in school is affected by eviction and, even deeper, how their later household structures, earnings, employment and incarceration rates as adults are affected by their families’ eviction years earlier during their childhood.

To do this, Tannenbaum said, the research will draw on University of Nebraska–Lincoln Central Plains Federal Statistical Research Data Center to link court data to restricted census data.

“So we can observe their earnings and employment histories,” Tannenbaum said. “We can observe whether they end up in homeless shelters. We can characterize a number of dimensions where eviction and housing instability may impact individuals.”

The grant will also integrate education into Tannenbaum’s research, expanding career pathways in social science through mentorship and networking, as well as curriculum development.

The CAREER grant will fund a new, annual one-day workshop for undergraduate students across institutions, integrated with the Nebraska Labor Summit conference; develop a new undergraduate course on field experiments for the Nebraska College of Business; and organize an interdisciplinary symposium on the design of housing assistance policy.

Ultimately, findings from Tannenbaum’s research could lead to changes in the eviction process. Policy areas include emergency rental assistance programs, homelessness diversion programs and perhaps modifications to the eviction court process, such as giving tenants more time to move.

Tannenbaum aims to teach his students to critically evaluate evidence with an eye toward evidence-based policymaking.

While his research is focused on urban America, Tannenbaum said, there is a need for research on eviction in rural areas, too.

The National Science Foundation’s CAREER award supports pre-tenure faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research.