Housing Costs, College Enrollment, and Student Mobility

We study the effects of rental price changes on college enrollment rates. We exploit cross-district variation in the size and timing of local rental price booms in Germany during the 2010s. A one standard deviation increase in apartment rents decreased per-capita college enrollment by 1.1 percentage points on average. The effect was driven by first-year students moving long distances and was more pronounced in less densely populated locations. Housing costs - the largest component of students' expenditures and an important location factor - have contributed to the slowdown in higher education expansion and reduced the skill-binding effect of universities, exacerbating regional inequality.