Housing Price Volatility and Downsizing in Later Life

James Banks, Richard Blundell (), Zoe Oldfield and James Smith

No 13496, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In this paper, we modeled several types of housing transitions of the elderly in two countries -- Britain and the United States. One important form of these transitions involves downsizing of housing consumption, the importance of which among older households is still debated. This downsizing takes multiple forms, including reductions in the number of rooms per dwelling and the value of the home. There is also evidence that this downsizing is greater when house price volatility is greater and that American households try to escape housing price volatility by moving to places that are experience significantly less housing price volatility. Our comparative evidence in suggests that there is less evidence of downsizing in Britain. Our results indicate that housing consumption appears to decline with age in the US, even after controlling for the other demographic and work transitions associated with age that would normally produce such a decline. No such fall in housing consumption is found in Britain, largely because British households are much more likely to stay in their original residence.

JEL-codes: D12 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-ure
Note: AG
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Published as Housing Price Volatility and Downsizing in Later Life , James Banks, Richard Blundell, Zoë Oldfield, James P. Smith. in Research Findings in the Economics of Aging , Wise. 2010

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13496.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Housing Price Volatility and Downsizing in Later Life (2010)
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:nbr:nberwo:13496

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13496

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().