Biography: Fernanda Rojas-Ampuero is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at UCLA. Her research focuses on two different topics. First, she studies the welfare consequences of urban policies in developing countries. Specifically, she investigates the long-term impact of public housing programs on families and their children and their consequences on income inequality within the city. Second, she investigates gender issues in the public finance literature, such as maternity leave and unemployment benefits, with a special interest in developing countries. In her research, she collects and digitize historical data that she combines with administrative sources, with the purpose of following individuals for long periods of time. In her dissertation, she studies the long-term effects of moving to a high-poverty neighborhood on earnings and schooling using evidence from a slum clearance program implemented in Santiago, Chile, between 1979 and 1985. Fernanda is from Chile, where she earned her BA and Master’s degree in Economics from Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC Chile). Beginning in Summer 2022, Fernanda will be a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and in January 2024 she will join the Department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an Assistant Professor.

Sent Away: The Long-Term Effects of Slum Clearance on Children and Families

Abstract: We study the long-term effects of moving to a high-poverty neighborhood on earnings and schooling using evidence from a slum clearance program implemented in Santiago, Chile, between 1979 and 1985. During the country’s dictatorship, the government mandated the eviction of entire slums and their relocation to public housing in low-income areas: Two-thirds of slums were relocated to new housing projects on the periphery of the city, and the rest received housing at their initial location. To estimate a displacement effect, we compare the outcomes of displaced and non-displaced children 20 to 40 years after the end of the policy. We show that displacement is unrelated to families’ demographics or neighborhood attributes prior to eviction. We construct a novel data set that combines archival records with administrative data containing 19,852 homeowners matched to 55,343 children. We find negative effects on children and families: Displaced children have 10% lower earnings and 0.5 fewer years of education as adults than non-displaced. Moreover, displaced children are more likely to work in informal jobs and their parents are more likely to die after the intervention. Destination characteristics mediate our results: Lower social cohesion in destination projects reduces children’s schooling, and their earnings are also affected by worse labor market access.