|
EconStor >
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin >
DIW-Diskussionspapiere >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/10419/27302
|
| | |
| Title: | | Mortgage market maturity and homeownership inequality among young households: a five-country perspective  |
| Authors: | | Bicakova, Alena Sierminska, Eva M. |
| Issue Date: | | 2008 |
| Series/Report no.: | | Discussion papers // German Institute for Economic Research 778 |
| Abstract: | | This paper uses the newly constructed Luxembourg Wealth Study data to document cross-country variation in homeownership rates and the homeownership-income inequality among young households in Finland, Germany, Italy, the UK and the US, and relate it to cross-country differences in mortgage market maturity. We find that aside from Italy, homeownership rates and inequality in the four countries correspond to their mortgage take up rates and its distribution across income, reflecting the different degree of development of their respective mortgage markets. In Italy, alternative ways of financing, such as family transfers, substitute the limited mortgage availability and explains the second highest homeownership rate in our sample, despite the lowest mortgage take up. The mortgage market in the UK is the most open and the most equal, which leads to the highest and most equally distributed homeownership in this country as well. The mortgage market in Germany is on the other side of the spectrum with very low mortgage take-up rates and strong dependence of homeownership and mortgage take up on household income. Finland and the US are in-between. Counterfactual predictions suggest that although household characteristics play some role in explaining the variation in home ownership rates across the five countries, it is mostly the country specific effects of these characteristics determined by the institutional environment as well as the functioning of the housing and mortgage markets that drive the main result. |
| Subjects: | | Homeownership credit constraints mortgage market |
| JEL: | | D14 D31 G21 R21 |
| Document Type: | | Working Paper |
| Appears in Collections: | | Publikationen von Forscherinnen und Forschern des DIW DIW-Diskussionspapiere
|
| |
| | |
Download bibliographical data as:
BibTeX
|
| |
Share on:http://hdl.handle.net/10419/27302
|
Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.
|