Kristin Perkins, Georgetown University

Presentation Title: The Hidden Private Safety Net: Shared Households and Older Adults’ Housing Costs

About the Presentation

Standard measures of hardship capture residual need that remains after the private safety net has operated. But taking support from family and friends for granted may misstate the level of need  – and disparities in needs – left by private markets and the public safety net. We demonstrate using the case of older adults’ housing affordability. Using Survey of Income and Program Participation data, we find that 15% of older adults are hosts, who share their home with others, and 6% are guests, who live in someone else’s home. Counterfactual estimates reveal that guests pay $793 less a month on housing than we predict they would in nonshared housing, and hosts pay $53 more. Without shared households, we estimate that half of Black, Hispanic, and Asian older adults would experience cost burdens, and racial disparities would be up to three times larger. Results illustrate how the private safety net dramatically shapes our understanding of social problems like the housing affordability crisis, especially for groups that rely heavily on support from family and friends.

About the Speaker

Kristin L. Perkins is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University. Kristin studies inequality and social stratification with a focus on children, families, and neighborhoods. Her research examines the consequences of residential mobility and changes in household composition for children's outcomes, the neighborhood contexts of child and adolescent development, and the consequences of housing policies for individuals and neighborhoods. Kristin received a PhD in Sociology & Social Policy at Harvard University, where she was also a doctoral fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgetown Kristin was a postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Seminar Format:

Location IN PERSON: 2208 LeFrak Hall. We are requesting advanced registration so that we can track capacity.  Please use this link to RSVP for in-person attendance.

Location ONLINE VIA ZOOM: Zoom registration link.  Upon registration, you will receive an automatically generated email with the direct link for the seminar

If accommodations are needed, please send a request to the meeting organizer (mprc-support@umd.edu) at least 72 hours prior to the event, if possible, to allow time to discuss and implement alternatives.