Housing wealth accumulation: The role of public housing

Florence Goffette-Nagot and Modibo Sidibé

Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2016, vol. 57, issue C, 12-22

Abstract: The public housing sector provides housing units at below-market rents, potentially allowing its tenants to save for a downpayment more quickly than they would have otherwise. In this paper, we analyze the effect of a spell in public housing on age at first-time homeownership using the French Housing Survey. We use a pseudo-panel approach that takes into account the specificities of the local housing market, to derive individual tenure transitions from multiple cross-sections data, for the period 1979–2006. Using an IV strategy to control for a potential selection into public housing, we jointly estimate public housing tenancy and duration before first-time homeownership, and take into account unobserved heterogeneity. Our results indicate that a spell in public housing increases the hazard to homeownership, supporting the idea that, in France in the study period, the public housing policy provided an important pathway to homeownership.

Keywords: Homeownership; Public housing; Tenure choice; Duration model; Unobserved heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C41 R21 R31 R38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:regeco:v:57:y:2016:i:c:p:12-22

DOI: 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2015.11.004

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