Like Father Like Son? Social Engineering and Intergenerational Mobility in Housing Consumption

We estimate the rate of intergenerational mobility in housing consumption in the context of largescale social engineering programs in Singapore. Using a comprehensive set of data on residential demographics merged with the real housing transaction records covering 149,745 parents-child pairs from 1995 to 2018, we find upward mobility for children born to grass-roots parents, downward mobility for children of middle-class parents, and high persistence for children of upperclass parents. Affordable public housing and high-quality public education are evident to promote intergenerational mobility in housing consumption for children born to grass-root parents. Those parents save from housing consumption and invest in children’s human capital; quality education further promotes their upward mobility. Possible reason for the downward intergenerational mobility of children born to middle-class parents lies in financial constraints in children’s human capital investment or difficulties in sorting into good neighborhoods squeezed from high housing consumption. Our results shed light on the design of social engineering programs for countries aiming to tackle social inequality using public policies.