Demographic Factors Affecting U.S. Households¡¯ Investment in Stocks

Binod Guragai and S. Drew Peabody

International Journal of Economics and Finance, 2018, vol. 10, issue 4, 112-122

Abstract: Using survey data of U.S. households, we examine the demographic factors associated with stock market participation to seek to explain why some households invest in stocks while others do not. We primarily utilize Probit model estimation robust to heteroskedasticity to evaluate multiple demographic variables that could potentially explain direct stock ownership. Additional tests examine the demographic factors associated with the amounts of direct stock ownership and indirect stock ownership through mutual funds, retirement accounts or other avenues. Our results identify various demographic factors that most likely affect U.S. households¡¯ investment in stocks, including age, gender, education level, income, homeownership and business ownership. These results are robust to multiple model variations. These findings may be of interest to financial scholars and policymakers as they seek to better understand stock market participation.

Keywords: U.S. stock ownership; survey of consumer finances; demographic factors; household investment decisions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijef/article/view/74061/40849 (application/pdf)
http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijef/article/view/74061 (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:ibn:ijefaa:v:10:y:2018:i:4:p:112-122

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Economics and Finance from Canadian Center of Science and Education Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Canadian Center of Science and Education ().