With the housing market still recovering from the subprime crisis, a key question for policymakers is how and whether to encourage homeownership and the role of down payments in the initial homeowner purchase. A new research paper co-authored by William Gale finds that Individual Development Accounts programs for low-income households, designed to help teach financial education and provide matching funds for qualified savings withdrawals, had no significant effect on homeownership rates after 10 years of implementation.