Mail-Ordered Mobility? Intergenerational Impacts of Homeownership

This paper investigates how the early-20th-century expansion of mail-order kit housing—factory-produced home kits sold and shipped by rail—changed towns’ access to homeownership and long-term intergenerational outcomes. Using newly digitized data on kit-housing firm mill locations, firm sales records, and full-count census data, the study exploits spatial variation in transportation costs to identify exogenous differences in access to kit housing across towns. It estimates effects on homeownership rates, residential tenure, educational attainment, and housing values contemporaneously, then traces long-run impacts on children’s educational and occupational mobility. Person-level purchase records linked to census data help characterize early adopters and validate identification. The project shows how a technological and logistical housing innovation altered geography of opportunity across generations.