Do the elderly reduce housing equity An internati

Authors: Maria Concetta Chiuri Tullio Jappelli

Publish Date: 2008/08/21

Volume: 23, Issue: 2, Pages: 643-663

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Abstract

We explore the pattern of elderly homeownership using 60 microeconomic surveys on about 300000 individuals residing in 15 OECD countries In all countries the survey is repeated over time permitting construction of an international dataset of repeated crosssectional data We find that ownership rates decline considerably after age 60 However a large part of the decline depends on cohort effects Adjusting for them we find that ownership rates start falling after age 70 and reach a percentage point per year decline after age 75 We find that differences across country ownership trajectories are correlated with indicators measuring market regulation degreeWe thank for the helpful comments the editor two anonymous referees Patrick Bolton Andrea Brandolini Janet Gornick Ailsa Roell Timothy Smeeding Ernesto Villanueva and participants at the CSEFIGIER Symposium on Economics and Institutions Anacapri 24–28 June 2007 the 2007 Aldi Hagenaars Memorial Lecture Luxembourg 29 June 2007 and the LWS Final Conference Enhancing Comparative Research on Household Finance Bank of Italy 5–7 July 2007 This work has been supported in part by the European Union under contracts HPRNCT200200235 Economics of Aging in Europe–AGE and by the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research MUR

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