Explaining why, right or wrong, (Italian) households do not like reverse mortgages*

Elsa Fornero, Mariacristina Rossi and Maria Cesira Urzì Brancati

Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, 2016, vol. 15, issue 2, 180-202

Abstract: We investigate the determinants of interest in reverse mortgages (RM) for a sample of Italian homeowners and find that the majority of individuals belonging to categories identified, on the basis of economic analysis, as the main potential beneficiaries (i.e., women, elderly and ‘house rich–cash poor’ individuals) are, in fact, less likely to express an interest. When allowing for individual characteristics, we find that most results remain robust and notice that risk aversion and negative expectations on one's standard of living after retirement predict higher interest in the product. These results suggest that RM is perceived not so much as an ordinary instrument to achieve a better standard of living, but rather as a remedy against poor consumption.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (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:cup:jpenef:v:15:y:2016:i:02:p:180-202_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Pension Economics and Finance from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().