The Impact of the Housing Crash on Family Wealth

Dean Baker and David Rosnick

CEPR Reports and Issue Briefs from Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)

Abstract: This paper extrapolates from data from the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finance to project household wealth, by wealth quintile, in 2009 under three alternative scenarios. The first scenario assumes that real house prices fall no further than their level as of March 2008. The second scenario assumes that real house prices fall an additional 10 percent as a 2009 average. The third scenario assumes that real house prices fall an additional 20 percent for a 2009 average. The projections show that the vast majority of families will see a substantial reduction in wealth by 2009 in any of these scenarios and that the cohorts just approaching retirement will have very little to support themselves in retirement other than their Social Security. The projections also show that a large number of families will have little or no equity in their homes in 2009.

Keywords: housing bubble; home prices; household wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E E21 L85 O51 R21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2008-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:epo:papers:2008-20

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