Housing Capital and Intergenerational Mobility in the United States

Ariel Binder, Max Risch and John Voorheis

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: We document the intergenerational transmission of housing capital in the United States using a new dataset linking Decennial Census data to administrative property and income-tax records for over 3.4 million families. We find that housing capital is substantially more persistent across generations than earnings. Moreover, the gap in housing capital between White and Black children widens sharply across the parental distribution, more so than the earnings gap. Using a capital accumulation and transmission framework, we study how assets and earnings jointly shape intergenerational housing capital persistence. Less than half of this persistence operates through children’s earnings; the majority reflects direct transmissions of resources or opportunities. Differences in earnings explain most of the White-Black housing gap at the bottom of the parental distribution, but less than half at the top. Finally, we present quasi-experimental evidence that local housing supply constraints amplify intergenerational persistence by widening homeownership gaps between children from lower- and higher-resource families. Together, our findings indicate that economic resources are more concentrated across generations than studies focused on income would imply, and that housing and capital market opportunity play an independent role alongside labor market opportunity in shaping intergenerational mobility.

Keywords: housing markets; intergenerational mobility; homeownership; wealth distribution; capital; income; housing supply; racial disparities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 E24 O18 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-ure
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https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/ces/CES-WP-25-55R.pdf Revised version, 2025 (application/pdf)
https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/ces/CES-WP-25-55.pdf First version, 2025 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Housing Capital and Intergenerational Mobility in the United States (2026)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:25-55

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