The Life Stages and Housing Decisions of Young Households: An Insider Perspective

Diana Ka-Yan Mok
Additional contact information
Diana Ka-Yan Mok: Department of Geography, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 2K6, Canada

Environment and Planning A, 2005, vol. 37, issue 12, 2121-2146

Abstract: Conventional housing studies often model a household's housing demand and tenure choice as a joint decision; life stages are ‘taste’ variables that shift the housing demand function. In this study, as in conventional ones, I treat housing demand and tenure choice as a joint decision. Unlike in conventional studies, however, I argue that some life stages are endogenous and that an individual chooses to opt in or out of some of these stages—to stay single or form a couple, or to raise children. These decisions are correlated with tenure choice and housing demand. I use the census microdata file and set up a system of nine equations: six regimes of housing demand, an equation to explain tenure choice, and two equations to describe life-stage decisions. The result shows that housing consumption is less sensitive to permanent income once the endogeneity of life stages has been accounted for—that is, part of the income effect on housing consumption is due to life-stage decisions.

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a3757 (text/html)

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:sae:envira:v:37:y:2005:i:12:p:2121-2146

DOI: 10.1068/a3757

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().