Housing Wealth Accumulation and Electoral Representation

Carlos Fernando Avenancio-León, Yutao He and Michael Reher

No 35731, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Political representation is systematically aligned with economically consequential differences in individual behavior: homeowners who are most deeply incorporated into electoral institutions are systematically more effective at accumulating housing wealth. Using a nationwide voter-property dataset, we find that realized housing appreciation increases monotonically with electoral participation, robust to controls for geography, partisanship, demographics, wealth proxies, and income. Politically engaged homeowners actively generate value by purchasing undervalued properties, investing more in improvements, and selling at a premium, indicating individual-level differences rather than passive market exposure. An original survey shows that these homeowners also systematically differ in personality traits, pointing to deeper individual differences associated with both political engagement and housing-market performance.

JEL-codes: D72 D91 R21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-09
Note: POL
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