The Impact of Macroeconomic Fluctuations on the Likelihood of African American Female Homeownership

Homeownership, a primary component of household wealth, confers benefits not just in terms of the value of home equity itself, but also the tax benefits and inflation protection associated with owning property. The 1990s represented a booming time in the economy and record low interest rates which allowed homeownership to become more available to more people than ever. As a result, the US housing market experienced significant growth and home values began to soar in part due to rising incomes. However, this period of rapid expansion in the housing market was followed by a rapid decline, precipitated by the recession, as home values began to plummet and foreclosures steadily increased. This study examines the impact that recent macroeconomic fluctuations had on the likelihood of homeownership for African American women compared to their white counterparts. Using data from the American Housing Survey (1997–2009), this tenure spatial analysis used a logistic regression model to examine the odds in favor of homeownership during economic fluctuations along with taking into consideration other important determinants. The empirical results show that there are significant differences in the likelihood of homeownership between African American women and white females.     

Home ownership,housing price and social security expenditure

This paper analyzes the substitution and trade-off effects of homeownership and housing price on social security expenditure. We construct a theoretical model to investigate the optimal choice for individual and government in social security system with estate transaction. The model predicts that the government is more likely to decrease (increase) social security spending under a higher home rate when house price rises (falls). We test 35 metropolises panel data which spans the year of 1998–2012 under a two-way fixed effects framework. Our empirical analysis supports the theoretical prediction. The estimation results show that at the current home rate 82%, 1% increase in housing price will lead to 1.15 Yuan reduction in social security spending per capita.     

Understanding the role of homeownership in wealth inequality: Evidence from urban China (1995–2018)

Many scholars have evaluated the wealth creation effects of homeownership over different time periods and have agreed on the positive role of homeownership. However, there are no consistent mechanisms to measure the impact of homeownership on wealth inequality. Based on data from 1995 to 2018, this paper finds that the expansion of the homeownership rate in urban China was an equalizing force in the distribution of wealth from 1995 to 2008, driven by the increased homeownership and housing acquisition of low- and moderate-income households (LMIs) during the era of housing reform in the 1990s. The forces were exogenous and dominated by a redistributive logic. In the post-reform era after 2008, the decline in the homeownership rate led to a concentration of wealth distribution that was driven by the widening wealth gap between owners and non-owners, which represented an endogenous market force. The results indicate that there was an apparent discontinuity of the trends of homeownership and wealth inequality because new immigrants could not afford the price of housing in the cities. The wealth position of the middle and lower classes (mainly new immigrant non-owners) was crippled, not only by the inaccessibility of homeownership, but also by the reinforcing effect of the increase in housing prices. This study reveals the different mechanisms of homeownership on wealth inequality and the policy implications for the redistributive effects of the allocation of housing resources.     

University education,homeownership and housing wealth

We utilise the implementation of the 1999 higher education expansion in China as a natural experiment to examine the relationship between university educational attainment, homeownership and housing wealth. Using data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies, results from our preferred models, which correct for endogeneity, suggest that having a university qualification generates a 3.5–6.3 percentage points increase in the probability of homeownership and a 24.3–51.1 percentage points increase in total housing wealth. We also find that holding a university qualification increases the number of houses one owns and housing wealth for those whose housing wealth is above the median. We find that self-reported social status and entitlement to superannuation are channels through which higher education affects homeownership and housing wealth and that financial literacy is a channel through which higher education affects housing wealth. We find considerable heterogeneity in the impact of higher education on housing outcomes across gender, family income levels, parent education and between urban and rural areas.     

Uncertainty and housing tenure choice by household types: Evidence from China

In this paper, we propose an uncertainty-preference-housing choice model and empirically investigate the effect of uncertainty on the probability of homeownership using microdata from Chinese cities. Introducing several measures of uncertainty, we observe that after the reform of the housing distribution system, unemployment uncertainty negatively affects the housing tenure choices of high-income families, whereas educational expenditure uncertainty has a negative effect on the homeownership rates of low-income families. We also find that unemployment uncertainty negatively affects the housing choices of local families and that medical expenditure uncertainty has a negative effect on housing choice for migrant families. Finally, an increase in unemployment uncertainty decreases the homeownership rate among families in which the head of household did not experience the change in enterprise ownership.     

Public housing in Charlottesville: The black experience in a small Southern City

The history and public policies related to the public housing program are presented within the context of a small southern city, Charlottesville, Virginia. Consistent with the stormy beginnings of public housing nationally, the article reveals that the early days of the program in Charlottesville also were troubled. City policies to affect the residential mix of housing are shown to have limited the quality of affordable housing available to the poor and especially to low-income blacks. Programs designed by the city to overcome some of these disadvantages through both home ownership and renting also are discussed.     

Strategic interaction between inter vivos gifts and housing acquisition

This paper models the interdependence of parental inter vivos gifts and children’s home purchases when informal care affects decision making. We use data from Japanese households who purchased a detached house in an urban area to test this strategic interaction. Considering both censoring and endogeneity of inter vivos gifts, which are identified by information on formal care, our preferred results demonstrate that inter vivos gifts do not significantly increase the purchase price of housing. Theory suggests that this occurs when informal care tends to be a heavy burden for children. However, subsample analysis of young home buyers indicates that the empirical results are consistent with the literature: children who receive parental gifts tend to purchase a higher-priced dwelling. One potential explanation is that relatively young adult children are less likely to take charge of care obligations, and accordingly, parental gifts are only expected to relax their liquidity constraints. Subsample analysis appears to indicate that the underlying motivation of parental gifts is influenced by the timing of children’s home purchase decisions.     

房价与地价关系的国际比较研究

文章通过比较分析国内外地价占房价的比例发现,我国地价占房价的比重与土地资源相对富裕的欧美发达国家美国、瑞典比较接近,远低于土地资源相对稀缺的亚洲发达国家和地区。土地稀缺程度、经济发展水平、政府政策和城市规划是影响房价与地价关系的主要因素。     

Housing and marital matching: A signaling perspective

This paper studies signaling behaviors in marital matching. As some of males' essential traits for marriage are hardly observable, a high-quality male is motivated to signal. This paper applies a modified Spence signaling model to the marriage market and tests the theoretical implications with survey data from rural China. We find that houses are primary signals in marriage markets in China, which explains both the high homeownership and the large housing sizes. We find 1) marriageable males are twice as much likely to build a house five years before marriage than five years after, while females do not behave the same way, 2) housing size is reflective of males' unobservable characteristics, especially in villages with high interest rates. Males with more social connections, higher income rank and greater wealth build larger houses. And 3) a ten-square-meter larger house reduces a male's probability of singlehood by 0.8% at the age of 30, and enables him to marry a wife 0.1 cm taller.     

Family structure and home ownership: Evidence from China

This paper studies how individuals, particularly low-income individuals, have financed housing purchases since the housing market was privatized in urban China in the 1990s. To the surprise of many policy makers and economists, more than 80% of the households in urban China owned private housing by the end of 2010. In contrast to most developed countries, we find that male siblings are important borrowing resources to purchase housing. Conditional on the number of siblings, having more brothers instead of sisters increases the probability of owning housing among male individuals born during the baby boom (1949–1978) in urban China. However, there is no such brother effect for females. The brother effect is stronger for males with low income or low levels of education and is also stronger when brothers are wealthier. Our results are robust to different model specifications. Our results suggest that females are likely to be excluded from family-based informal financial market for housing purchase among baby boom generations in China.     

新自由主义化时期的发达国家住房政策演变

20世纪后30年代为资本主义发达国家住房政策新自由主义化的关键时期,文章分析了该时期发达国家的住房政策演变,内容着重于盎格鲁—撒克逊国家。首先讨论了住房政策新自由主义化的背景,然后从放松住房金融管制、重构住房补贴方式、促进住房自有和分散责任与风险四个方面分析了推动住房领域新自由主义化的具体政策,最后指出住房政策的新自由主义化导致了资本主义国家社会性住房剩余化、贫富差距拉大与风险增加。     

The Impact of Housing Prices on Health in the United States Before,During, and After the Great Recession

We estimate the effects of U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Area housing prices on a variety of health outcomes and health-related behaviors separately for homeowners and tenants. The constructed data set consists of information on individuals from the 2002–2012 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System combined with homeownership data from the March Current Population Survey and housing prices from Freddie Mac. We estimate positive effects on homeowners' mental health when housing prices increase. We also find negative effects on tenants' health and health-related behaviors with increases in housing prices. These estimated contemporaneous effects are concentrated among low-income homeowners and tenants, and the effects for tenants are not persistent in the long run. However, the cumulative effects of an increase in housing prices on obesity become more pronounced for homeowners in the long run, resulting in worse self-reported health.     

Does Homeownership Lead to Longer Unemployment Spells? The Role of Mortgage Payments

This paper examines the impact of housing tenure choice on unemployment duration in Belgium using EU-SILC micro data. We contribute to the literature in distinguishing homeowners with mortgage payments and outright homeowners. Accounting for tenure endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity, we find that homeowners with a mortgage exit unemployment first, while outright owners stay unemployed the longest. Tenants take an intermediate position. Our results emphasize the key role of housing costs in the link between housing tenure and labour market outcomes. Considered together with the results of recent macroeconomic research on housing and employment in Belgium, this paper provides indirect evidence for significant negative effects of homeownership on the labour market and the economy beyond the owners themselves.     

Response to “The Subprime Crisis and African Americans” by Sandra Phillips

Lucy Reuben’s Response to “The Subprime Crisis and African Americans” by Sandra Phillips includes an overview of the linkages between historical housing disparities and the adverse wealth gap from which the African American community suffers. Reuben discusses how the subprime mortgage crisis has reduced both African American homeownership and African American access to wealth-building for entrepreneurial development. Finally, Reuben offers policy recommendations related to expanding financial literacy and strengthening regulatory oversight.     

国内外养老地产发展文献综述

在中国人口老龄化加快的背景下,探讨如何建立养老地产体制显得尤为迫切。国外养老地产发展相对较早,有着丰富的经验。文章对国内国外的学者在养老地产方面的研究做一个归纳与总结,试图为国内学者后续研究提供线索和框架,对政府部门和我国养老地产投资者提供理论指导和借鉴。     

Recent housing affordability in urban China: A comprehensive overview

In this study, we provide a comprehensive overview of housing affordability in China from both the macro and micro perspectives. We extend the scope of housing affordability analysis to all Chinese cities based on a unique panel dataset in 275 Chinese prefecture cities from 2014 to 2018. We also make a novel methodological contribution to the literature by employing micro-level data from an anonymous major Chinese city in 2015. Our results suggest that the overall level of housing affordability in Chinese cities remained relatively stable or even improved during the sample period. However, we identify a few “superstar cities,” such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Xiamen, which are associated with a serious housing affordability problem. This problem arises from both a shortage of supply in the space market and a potential mispricing in the asset market, and may have a spillover effect on surrounding cities due to home purchase restrictions in the superstar cities. Within these cities, the housing affordability problem leads to longer commuting time due to the separation of home and workplace, and lower housing space consumption for the residents.     

Epidemic and Economic Consequences of Voluntary and Request-based Lockdowns in Japan

I examine the epidemiological and economic effects of two types of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan: a voluntary lockdown by which people voluntarily stayed at home in response to the risk of infection, and a request-based lockdown by which the government requested people to stay at home without legal enforcements. I use empirical evidence on these two types of lockdowns to extend an epidemiological and economic model: the SIR-Macro model. I calibrate this extended model to Japanese data and conduct some numerical experiments. The results show that the interaction of these two types of lockdowns plays an important role in the low proportion of infectious individuals and the large decrease in consumption in Japan.     

建立符合我国国情的住房消费模式

近年来,房地产市场成为社会关注的焦点,房价暴涨给民众带来了巨大的负担,但并未扑灭民众高涨的购房热情。我国住房自有率在短短几年内已蹿升到世界前列,这与整体的经济发展状况很不相符。改变现状不仅要靠市场的调节和政府政策的调控,而且要引导民众逐步转变房产消费观念,理性消费。     

Examining the impact of home purchase restrictions on China's housing market

This paper studies the impact of home purchase restrictions on China's housing market. We estimate a structural model of household preference for housing, real estate developers' pricing decisions, and equilibrium market outcome in five large cities. By comparing the estimation results from pre- and post-policy intervention, we find that, after home purchase restrictions are implemented, overall housing demand in most cities becomes weaker and less price elastic; meanwhile, real estate developers face higher holding costs and thus are willing to lower prices and sell more quickly. Counterfactual analyses show that in some cities alternative policy designs that cause less structural change of demand could achieve larger consumer welfare and social welfare than the implemented policy.     

Housing tenure choice and socio-economic integration of migrants in rising cities of China

Migrants' socio-economic integration is taken as one of important forms for common prosperity. And it is a crucial factor for social harmony and stability. However, the association between housing tenure choice and migrants' socio-economic integration does not receive enough attention. Based on 2017 China Migrants Dynamics Survey (CMDS), it is found migrants' socio-economic integration mainly consists of the following three aspects: Economic integration, socio-cultural integration and psychological integration. Compared with migrant renters, the socio-economic integration of migrants with houses is rather higher, while migrants' level of socio-economic integration, who live in employee's dormitories, is comparatively low, even after controlling the endogenous by using PSM and IV method. Further study indicates that the effect of housing tenure choice on migrants' socio-economic integration partly affects their settlement intention, integration will, local capital and labor supply. Heterogeneity analysis shows that new generation have a negative effect on the role of homeownership on migrants' socio-economic integration, while living in eastern China and the development of digital economy can both strengthen the effect of housing tenure choice on migrants' socio-economic integration.