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First lead, now no bed? The unintended impacts of lead abatement laws on eviction

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  • Fesko, Luke

Abstract

Lead paint in old houses is the leading cause of lead poisoning in children under 6 today. To combat this problem, several states have passed lead abatement laws, forcing landlords to remove lead in the homes they rent if tenants have children under the age of 6. However, these laws have unintended consequences, causing landlords to evict tenants rather than abate lead. I use a difference-in-differences approach while employing various model specifications with various fixed effects and sets of controls to examine the impact of Ohio’s 2003 lead abatement law on eviction rates. Using newly collected data from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, I find that the passage of Ohio’s lead abatement law sharply increased targeted evictions. Due to the law’s passage, the average census district in Ohio faced an increased eviction rate of roughly 0.457 points, corresponding to an additional 13.93 evictions a year. These impacts are highly statistically significant, sizeable, and economically meaningful, indicating that policy makers should incorporate distributional consequences when designing future lead abatement laws in order to avoid unintended consequences and ensure equitable outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Fesko, Luke, 2023. "First lead, now no bed? The unintended impacts of lead abatement laws on eviction," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:117:y:2023:i:c:s0095069622001048
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2022.102751
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Evictions; Lead abatement; Environmental justice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy
    • R50 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - General

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