Housing affordability and domestic violence: The case of San Francisco’s rent control policies
Journal of Health Economics · 2026 · E.J.M. Geddes、Nicole Holz
中文摘要
美国超过三分之一的女性经历过亲密伴侣暴力（IPV）；现有研究表明家庭财务状况是此类暴力的重要驱动因素之一。我们研究租金管制对IPV的影响，以加深对IPV财务成因的理解。租金管制可能减轻关系中的财务压力，并减少导致暴力的紧张情绪。反之，它也可能使离开关系变得更加昂贵，改变关系中的议价能力，从而导致更多暴力。我们利用1994年旧金山租金管制的扩大作为自然实验来研究这一问题。这一扩大导致不同邮政编码区域内新纳入租金管制的租赁单元数量存在差异。我们采用连续型双重差分设计来利用这一差异。我们估计新纳入租金管制的单元数量与导致女性住院的袭击之间存在-0.08的弹性。对于平均邮政编码区域而言，这一效应意味着对女性的袭击减少了近10%。这一关系无法用社区构成或整体犯罪的变化来解释，这与效应由个体层面的IPV变化所驱动相一致。
Abstract
Over a third of women in the United States experience intimate partner violence (IPV); existing research demonstrates that household finances are one important driver of such violence. We study the effects of rent control on IPV to develop understanding of the financial causes of IPV. Rent control may lessen financial stressors within a relationship and decrease strain that leads to violence. Conversely, it may make leaving the relationship more costly, shifting the bargaining power in the relationship and leading to more violence. We leverage the 1994 expansion of rent control in San Francisco as a natural experiment to study this question. This expansion created variation across ZIP codes in the number of rental units that were newly rent controlled. We exploit this variation in a continuous difference-in-difference design. We estimate an elasticity of -0.08 between the number of newly rent controlled units and assaults on women resulting in hospitalization. This effect translates to a nearly 10% decrease in assaults on women for the average ZIP code. This relationship is not explained by changes in neighborhood composition or overall crime, consistent with the effects being driven by individual level changes in IPV.