World Bank Analyst Tanu Kumar ’12 on Benefits of Subsidized Homeownership

The other two programs are urban initiatives in Mumbai, she said. "One is known as the 'slum rehabilitation program,' in which communities are moved wholesale from their settlements, which are destroyed, and given apartments in government-constructed buildings." This type of program can be found in pretty much every city in India and much of the Global South, added Kumar, "including countries like Indonesia, Brazil, and Kenya." The third program she analyzed, which can also be found in other cities throughout the region, is implemented through a lottery system that enables low-income families to purchase deeply discounted government-built dwellings.

"I wanted to understand how these widespread and understudied programs affect the people who benefit," she said, "not just by focusing on economic factors but [also on] a broader range of outcomes related to how they make decisions related to their future, how they also felt about themselves, and how they behaved as members of their communities."

Kumar's conclusions underline the significance of putting people into housing that they own rather than rental units, which is the case with many low-income housing programs in the US, for example. Property ownership makes people more invested in the community they live in and more likely to emerge from poverty, she stressed.

During her visit to campus, Kumar also spent time talking to students in Visiting Assistant Professor Shaukat Ansari' s class "The Politics of Development." She talked about her job at the World Bank, which she joined this year after being an assistant professor of politics and economics at Claremont Graduate University. Kumar is currently a governance specialist in the World Bank's Public Institutions and Data Analytics Unit, meaning she looks at how governments spend the funds allocated to them. She also tackles issues of corruption.