The Gender Gap in Housing Returns

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham and Kelly Shue

No 26914, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Housing wealth represents the dominant form of savings for American households. Using detailed data on housing transactions across the United States since 1991, we find that single men earn 1.5 percentage points higher unlevered returns per year on housing relative to single women. The gender gap grows significantly larger after accounting for mortgage borrowing: men earn 7.9 percentage points higher levered returns per year relative to women. Approximately 45% of the gap in housing returns can be explained by gender differences in the location and timing of transactions. The remaining gap arises primarily from gender differences in execution prices: data on repeat sales reveal that women buy the same property for approximately 2% more and sell for 2% less. Women experience worse execution prices because of differences in the choice of initial list price and negotiated discount relative to the list price. Gender differences in upgrade and maintenance rates, and preferences for housing characteristics and listing agents appear to be less important factors. Overall, the gender gap in housing returns is economically large and can explain 30% of the gender gap in wealth accumulation at retirement.

JEL-codes: D14 D31 G4 G51 J16 R2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
Note: AP CF LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Published as PAUL GOLDSMITH‐PINKHAM & KELLY SHUE, 2023. "The Gender Gap in Housing Returns," The Journal of Finance, vol 78(2), pages 1097-1145.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26914.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Gender Gap in Housing Returns (2020)
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:26914

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26914

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 ().