"Governments subsidise home ownership because they think it encourages stable, more law-abiding neighbourhoods. The children of homeowners do better at school than the children of renters do. Homeowners are more engaged in local democracy. And, because homeowners must pay off their mortgages, housing supposedly encourages people to save more than they otherwise would."
Is it any surprise that the kind of people who save up a huge amount of money to make a down payment and are consistently responsible enough to always make large mortgage payments are 'good' people?
By 'good' I simply mean the kind of people who abide by laws, encourage their children in their school work, take an active interest in local government, etc.
This reminds me of a program they had in Illinois where the state decided to send books to all new parents. Some study found that children who grew up in houses with lots of books did better on a wide variety of metrics so the government reasoned that sending books to parents would somehow help the kids. It never occurred to them that the key was that type of people who bought/read a lot of books where also the type of people who were better parents.
Oh, I agree - but I was answering a question: "Why does the government..." Is this scientific policy? Is this good policy? Those are different questions.
Comments
http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1... and http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1... discuss some of these questions:
"Governments subsidise home ownership because they think it encourages stable, more law-abiding neighbourhoods. The children of homeowners do better at school than the children of renters do. Homeowners are more engaged in local democracy. And, because homeowners must pay off their mortgages, housing supposedly encourages people to save more than they otherwise would."
Correlation != Causation
Is it any surprise that the kind of people who save up a huge amount of money to make a down payment and are consistently responsible enough to always make large mortgage payments are 'good' people?
By 'good' I simply mean the kind of people who abide by laws, encourage their children in their school work, take an active interest in local government, etc.
This reminds me of a program they had in Illinois where the state decided to send books to all new parents. Some study found that children who grew up in houses with lots of books did better on a wide variety of metrics so the government reasoned that sending books to parents would somehow help the kids. It never occurred to them that the key was that type of people who bought/read a lot of books where also the type of people who were better parents.
Oh, I agree - but I was answering a question: "Why does the government..." Is this scientific policy? Is this good policy? Those are different questions.