JUE insight: The unintended effect of Argentina's subsidized homeownership lottery program on intimate partner violence

Abstract

We study a natural experiment in Argentina, where low-income women were selected through a lottery system to receive a house and a heavily subsidized long-term mort- gage. We exploit the random assignment to estimate the causal link between sub- sidized homeownership programs and intimate partner violence (IPV). Our analysis utilizes administrative records of the population of women applicants to assess the im- pact of homeownership on IPV, differentiating between women under joint-ownership contracts with their partners and those under single-ownership contracts. We find that the program causes an increase in IPV for women under joint-ownership contracts and a decrease in IPV for women under single-ownership contracts. Our results highlight the importance of considering the design of subsidized homeownership programs and explicitly incorporating measures to facilitate exit from conflicting relationships.