More than 50 years after U.S. residents secured the right to guaranteed legal representation in criminal cases, the United States remains an outlier among wealthy democracies for not extending that same right in civil cases.

Because legal representation in criminal cases is often considered a cornerstone of anti-poverty policy, a key, understudied question is whether legal representation in civil cases could improve outcomes for poor Americans.

In a working paper that studies the impact of a New York City program that guarantees legal representation to low-income tenants in housing court, Janet Currie, the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs with Princeton’s Department of Economics and the School for Public and International Affairs (SPIA), and Michael Cassidy, a postdoctoral research associate at SPIA’s Center for Health and Wellbeing, found that increases in legal representation lead to better outcomes for tenants in housing court.

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