Housing Capital and Intergenerational Mobility in the United States

Ariel Binder (), Max Risch and John Voorheis
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Ariel Binder: U.S. Census Bureau
Max Risch: Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University
John Voorheis: Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau

No 18546, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: Housing is the largest capital asset for most families. While the intergenerational mobility literature has extensively studied the income distribution, it has devoted less attention to housing, in part due to data limitations. We document 3 features of intergenerational mobility by comparing housing capital and income in a new dataset covering 3.4 million U.S. families. First, housing is more persistent across generations than earnings. Moreover, the housing gap between White and Black children grows more sharply throughout the parental resource distribution than does the earnings gap. Second, less than half of intergenerational housing persistence operates through child earnings, leaving substantial scope for direct transmissions of capital assets and knowledge. The direct channel is much weaker among Black families and can almost fully explain their greater risk of downward mobility. Third, local housing supply constraints shape spatial differences in the intergenerational mobility of housing - but not of earnings - as measured in a quasi-experimental shift-share design. Our results highlight a more rigid structure of economic resources across families than implied by income studies.

Keywords: housing markets; intergenerational mobility; homeownership; wealth distribution; capital; income; housing supply; racial disparities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 E24 O18 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hre, nep-inv and nep-uep
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