Adequate housing and student achievement: a case of Pakistan during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract Research on the effects of the built environment on people’s lives demonstrates adequate housing plays an important role in the overall dwell-being of families and impacts their health. We study the specific relationship between adequate housing and student academic outcomes in the case of early childhood education through grade 10 among Pakistani students (N=178,610). We use secondary data collected by Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Pakistan in 2020 to test various hypotheses using multilevel regression analyses where students are nested within households. The results confirm that adequate housing elements such as house tenure, housing type, available water, and access to the internet have positive and statistically significant relationship to student achievement. Additionally, we show that access to household information and communication technology helps students get higher achievement especially during COVID-19, which had a negative relationship to student achievement. These findings provide evidence of the importance of having adequate housing for families in Pakistan, especially having access to household information and communication technologies for students learning during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.