Currently reading Khaliliaraghi (2026) on how students’ housing situation affects their academic performance

This is a really cool study: At LU, students have the opportunity to be drawn in a lottery that gives them a spot in the waiting list for affordable student housing — just by the luck of draw, independent of parental income, prior performance, or other factors that might make interpretation of the data difficult. The higher up in the queue, the more likely it is that students get a spot really early on, so the spot in the list is a proxy for knowing that you have affordable housing available — or that you don’t.

Having just experienced first hand how a friend was waiting to find out which university they get a spot in, and then the very short period of time in which they have to decide which spot to take (luxury problem, but still!), and then make housing arrangements potentially far away from home, I am very aware that this is a very stressful situation to be in. And this gets much worse if the housing situation is unclear, and once the term starts, if students are in temporary housing that quickly gets outrageously expensive and are trying to find something else, have to commute from far away, live close to campus but pay more in rent than they can really afford. So this is stressful, but does it affect anything else than student wellbeing?

According to Khaliliaraghi (2026), it does. On average, students who are highest up in the queue do better than the average of those further down and those not in the queue. The students highest up who knew first that they will have affordable housing do much better than those that don’t know for a while, or that don’t get in. Students who do get into the housing late already show the effects of the detrimental experiences, whatever the mechanisms exactly are, that others experience even longer — the stress that didn’t let them focus on learning and finding community during the first few crucial weeks, the side jobs that they had to take on to afford housing, the loans that they now have to pay back, the time, effort, money spent commuting, even though they did end up in the affordable housing eventually. Interestingly (but really not surprisingly), the effects on learning are bigger for students that are only moving to Sweden, since their safety net is even further away, their money (if they have it) might not easily be accessible in Sweden, they might not speak good Swedish yet, nor understand the weird queuing system that Swedish kids get signed into at birth, and might additionally even face prejudices and racism. So while predictable and reliable affordable housing is important for all students, it is especially important for those that are relocating on short notice.

Students’ housing situations are beyond what individual teachers can typically influence. But it is very interesting to understand influences on students’ academic performance (anyone still believe in meritocracy?), and seeing such a clear influence of affordable housing shows the need to lobby for better learning conditions beyond what is happening in the classroom.

Negar Khaliliaraghi (2026). Studenters bostadssituation påverkar studieresultaten. Ekonomisk debatt, 5/2026 (årgång 54), https://www.nationalekonomi.se/artikel/studenters-bostadssituation-paverkar-studieresultaten/

Rainy and windy days make for perfect sauna days, and the other day I was there all by myself! The luxury!

The colder and greyer the weather, the more I appreciate a sauna.

Especially one with these views!

But nice when the rain stops before the walk home…

Even in grey weather, waves are awesome.

But difficult for my camera to understand where to focus…