A child who moves twice during primary school does not arrive at secondary school under the same conditions as a child who has grown up in the same apartment. European national longitudinal studies, notably in the United Kingdom, find concerning associations between repeated mobility and school results. School performance and spending differ significantly between countries; no simple comparison allows these gaps to be attributed to residential mobility.

The Essentials

  • Children in unstable or overcrowded housing have significantly lower probability of completing secondary school, according to OECD Education at a Glance 2025.
  • Residential stability predicts school results better than the level of public spending per student, according to English and Dutch comparisons.
  • The mechanism operates through three channels: disruptions in school relationships, cognitive burden related to insecurity, and geographic segregation of educational institutions.
  • The Netherlands and Nordic countries have made housing stability an explicit lever of educational policy, with measurable effects on attainment.
  • The urban housing crisis in wealthy countries intensifies forced mobility of low-income families, which could cancel out part of the school gains achieved over the past two decades.

A Move Is Not Simply a Change of Address

When a family is forced to leave its housing, its child may change schools. The child loses classmates, the teacher barely knows them, and must rebuild a place in an already-formed group. When this occurs during primary school, the effects on foundational learning, particularly reading and arithmetic, can accumulate before entering secondary school.

Longitudinal studies conducted with cohorts of British and Dutch children suggest these effects can persist. Researchers speak of a “school anchoring deficit”: the mobile child does not always benefit from the pedagogical continuity that allows a teacher to identify early difficulties and address them over time. They may be less often directed toward support mechanisms when follow-up of their needs has been interrupted.

Overcrowded housing adds another constraint. Very dense sharing of a bedroom can limit work space, disrupt sleep, and increase noise exposure, but these effects depend on the actual housing conditions. Chronic exposure to certain noises is associated with cognitive impairment in children, but the state of evidence is heterogeneous and does not allow us to assert without qualification a clearly established effect on working memory and attention. Living conditions and the home learning environment can contribute to school results, complementing school resources and practices.

Spending More Does Not Compensate for Instability

School budgets finance resources that are activated during school time. Forced mobility can also have effects outside this time: during the disruption period between two institutions, during the readjustment weeks following arrival in a new place of residence, in the mental burden the child carries into the classroom. Educational spending does not automatically replace residential stability, but targeted funding can help students affected by mobility.

Educational spending and school results vary between European countries. Available comparisons do not allow us to establish that residential stability explains the relationship between public spending and results.

The OECD documents spending and result gaps, but not the statistical mechanism attributed to residential stability. Education at a Glance 2025 documents notably educational inequalities and tertiary completion, not the alleged effect of unstable or overcrowded housing on secondary school completion. Certain residential characteristics may have a residual association with results after controlling for income, without necessarily establishing an independent causal effect.

This does not mean that school spending does not matter. It does matter, and enrolling students without actually instructing them remains a separate problem. Per-student spending does not replace housing and social protection policies, but targeted support can reduce certain effects of residential disruptions.

The comparison between England and the Netherlands highlights differences in educational spending, rental markets, and social housing stock. Available data do not allow a simple comparison between school changes during the cycle in the two countries. The Netherlands has a larger social housing stock and better-protected leases.

The results gap between the two systems cannot be simply attributed to residential differences.

Policies in the Netherlands and Nordic Countries

Dutch policy was not explicitly designed as an educational policy. Social or associative housing currently represents approximately one quarter to slightly less than one third of the Dutch housing stock; with recent official figures, the order of magnitude is close to 27%. Dutch social housing is governed by rent and allocation rules, but there is no general guarantee prohibiting all economic evictions during children’s schooling.

The specific school effects of this arrangement are not established by available comparisons.

Finland and Denmark have instruments for housing regulation and support, but their cumulative effects on the stability of the vast majority of families must be quantified. Finland was among the best-performing countries in the early 2000s, while Denmark generally achieved results close to or above OECD average, without sustaining PISA dominance.

Finland strengthened school attendance requirements and path-following measures, without an identified national policy explicitly making housing stability an instrument for preventing school dropout.

The Segregation Mechanism That No One Steers

School segregation resulting from residential choices results from no central decision: it emerges from individual rational choices, income constraints, and market dynamics that each family undergoes without directing them. Public authorities then face a collective outcome that no one deliberately wanted, which complicates the political legitimacy of any correction. Acting on this segregation indeed requires intervening in individual freedoms perceived as neutral, beginning with the freedom to settle where rents are affordable.

A third, less visible channel operates through territorial concentration. When low-income families cluster in certain neighborhoods because rents are affordable there, the schools in these neighborhoods welcome an increasing proportion of students in residential precarity situations. Peer effects work fully: the concentration of difficulties destabilizes even individually stable students.

This residential-school segregation mechanism is documented in England, Belgium, and Sweden. It sustains itself: when families with the means to do so flee institutions judged disadvantaged, they worsen the concentration that others endure. School choice, often presented as a response to segregation, can in certain contexts intensify it by emptying neighborhood institutions of their most stable students.

Dutch housing and planning policies notably aim at residential diversity. The specific school effects of these policies are not established by available comparisons.

Sweden experiences documented residential segregation, but it is inaccurate to simply attribute it to a general liberalization of the rental market in the 1990s. Swedish PISA results, which had declined between 2000 and 2012, partially recovered. The Swedish recovery after 2012 coincided with several educational and demographic developments; the effect of residential stability is not established by identified analyses.

Achievements That the Urban Housing Crisis Risks Erasing

In several major European metropolitan areas, rising rents increase difficulties in accessing affordable housing. Low-income families may be pushed toward the periphery or toward overcrowded housing in older neighborhoods. The evolution of forced mobility must be documented according to territories.

This pressure on affordable housing acts as an accelerator of existing economic inequalities, and its possible school effects must be documented over time. Degradation of students’ living conditions can affect their school continuity, without allowing attribution to it alone of an evolution in educational results.

Housing stability is an important factor in well-being and school continuity; school cannot alone solve housing problems, but it can mitigate certain effects. Additional support does not entirely replace school continuity, but it can help reduce the consequences of school changes.

The open question is whether European educational policies will continue to treat housing as a variable external to their scope, or whether education ministries will begin to advocate for stable housing policies as a condition of their own results. Finland has implemented policies for monitoring school paths. The Netherlands has housing and planning policies likely to indirectly influence school continuity. The rest of Europe watches.

Sources

  1. OECD, Education at a Glance 2025, How are social outcomes related to education
  2. Habitat for Humanity, research reports on housing and educational results (no link, verifiable organization on habitat.org)
  3. AEFP (Association for Education Finance and Policy), research briefs on residential stability and school attainment