What about the Children? Disparities in the Housing Conditions of Roma and Ethnic Romanian Children
What about the Children? Disparities in the Housing Conditions of Roma and Ethnic Romanian Children

Summary/Abstract: Extending an earlier study that we published in this journal (Khanna, Cutler, Marin, 2021), this research examines the following question: Do the housing conditions of Roma children in Romania differ from the housing characteristics of ethnic Romanian children? If we find that the Roma are disadvantaged, we further ask: Are these conditions due to their ethnicity or to whether they live in a rural area or in an urban area? To examine these questions, we use data publicly available from the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation. These data – a 10 percent sample from the 2011 Romanian national Census – are useful for our purposes because (1) they are the most recent national data from Romania with the necessary variables, (2) the data set includes 294,328 non-Roma Romanians 17 years of age and younger and 23,817 Roma ages 17 and younger, and (3) these Census data ask about very detailed household characteristics. The data are analyzed using cross-tabulation procedures and presented using percentages and means. On every housing variable examined, Roma children are disadvantaged as compared to ethnic Romanian children; the same finding is true regardless of whether the child lives in a rural or in an urban area. We conclude the article by summarizing specific findings, by discussing the implications of the findings for social workers, and by pointing to additional directions for research.

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