EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Impacts of Racial Differences in Economic Challenges on Housing, Wealth, and Economic Security Among OASI Beneficiaries

Francis Wong, Kate Pennington and Amir Kermani

CES Technical Notes Series from Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau

Abstract: Housing wealth comprises 40 percent of the net wealth of retirement-age Americans, 43 percent of whom have not yet paid off their mortgages. This report analyzes two research questions. First, we evaluate the extent to which Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) benefits advance economic security and racial equity among homeowners. Our use of linked administrative data facilitates a comparative analysis of economic well-being measures before and after homeowners became eligible for OASI benefits. Second, we analyze how racial disparities in job losses during working years contribute to racial differences in economic security at retirement, focusing particularly on exposure to distressed home sales. Utilizing confidential taxpayer microdata, we assess racial discrepancies in the incidence of job loss, distressed sales, and wealth destruction due to distressed sales. Our findings imply that racial/ethnic differences in wealth at retirement are at least partly attributable to differences in labor market experiences. In terms of policy implications, our findings provide support for policies that mitigate employment and income instability during working years. Such policies are likely to have effects that accumulate throughout the life cycle and can mitigate racial/ethnic differences in wealth at retirement.

Keywords: IRS-1040; IRS-1099; LEHD; BestRace; Black Knight; ACS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-lma and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/tn/CES-TN-2023-17.pdf Abstract (application/pdf)
https://www.census.gov/about/adrm/ced/apply-for-access.html?CES-TN-2023-17 First version, 2023 (application/pdf)
CES Technical Notes may contain confidential data and, thereby, disclosure is prohibited. Researchers on approved projects (to apply for access, please see https://www.census.gov/ces/rdcresearch/howtoapply.html) with the correct permissions can request full text notes from CES.Technical.Notes.List@census.gov.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:tnotes:23-17

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CES Technical Notes Series from Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Danielle H. Sandler ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:cen:tnotes:23-17