Homeownership and household formation: no homeownership, no marriage?
- PDF / 765,691 Bytes
- 19 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 86 Downloads / 304 Views
Homeownership and household formation: no homeownership, no marriage? Mingzhi Hu1 · Xue Wang2 Received: 25 February 2019 / Accepted: 14 December 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract This study examines the homeownership effect on the likelihood of marriage. Benefits brought by homeownership are highlighted in existing research. Specifically, owning a house may increase one’s attractiveness in the marriage market. Therefore, homeowners more likely get married than renters. We test this hypothesis by comparing the marriage rate between homeowners and renters in China, where house is often regarded as a prerequisite for marriage. We use the data from the China Family Panel Studies survey. After controlling for observables, homeownership increases the likelihood of marriage by approximately 6.8 percentage points, corresponding to an increase of 66.02% of the marriage rate relative to the average. Our results are robust after controlling for the sample selection bias, omitted personality characteristics, unobserved heterogeneity, accompaniment of homeownership to marriage, and model misspecification. Keywords Homeownership · Marriage · Disparity · China JEL Classification R21 · J23
1 Introduction The importance of homeownership is hard to deny. Numerous studies have provided evidence on the economic and social consequences of the transition from renting to homeownership, including household behavior, household investment strategy and wealth accumulation, household mobility, labor force behavior, urban formation and demographic segregation, housing maintenance, political and social activities, health and mental status, entrepreneurial engagement, and child outcomes (Chen and Hu 2019; Chetty et al. 2017; Cocco 2005; Coulson and Fisher 2009; Flavin and Yamashita 2002; * Mingzhi Hu [email protected] Xue Wang [email protected] 1
Department of Economics, College of Economics, Jinan University, Guangdong 510632, China
2
Institute of Chinese Financial Studies, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 610074, China
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
M. Hu, X. Wang
Haurin et al. 2002; Krumm and Kelly 1989). Moreover, homeownership status can theoretically increase one’s attractiveness in the marriage market, given that homeownership is an important status and comes with various benefits (Clarke and Zavisca 2015; Grinstein-Weiss et al. 2014; Zheng et al. 2016). However, existing research on the relationship between homeownership and marriage is relatively limited. Furthermore, the mechanism revealing how homeownership status may affect the likelihood of marriage is not yet well established. Therefore, this study empirically investigates the relationship between homeownership and household formation. Two previous studies have addressed the same topic. Eriksen (2010) finds that homeownership subsidies increase the marriage rate of lowincome households by using the data from the Individual Development Account program, which provides treated participants with down payment assistance when purchasing a hou
Data Loading...
