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Working Papers Series

A Note on the Benefits of Homeownership
By: Daniel Aaronson

Working Papers Series
Research Department
WP 99-23

Forthcoming, Journal of Urban Economics

I.

A Note on the Benefits of Homeownership

Daniel Aaronson
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Research Department
230 S. LaSalle St.
Chicago, IL 60604
daaronson@frbchi.org

December 1999

Abstract
This brief note adds to recent work that attempts to identify externalities associated with
homeownership. The results suggest that some of the homeownership effect found in Green and
White [5] is driven by family characteristics associated with homeownership, especially residential
stability. However, as much as homeownership increases residential stability, it appears to be
correlated with higher school attainment. Attempts to control for endogeneity cannot eliminate this
finding.

_____________________________
I thank Ann Ferris for her assistance and the editor for his comments. The views expressed in this
paper are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
or the Federal Reserve System.

Introduction
A number of recent studies attempt to measure whether there are nontraditional benefits to
homeownership, such as increases in the success of children (Green and White [5]), citizenship
(DiPasquale and Glaeser [3]), and a variety of family outcomes and attitudes (Rossi and Weber
[11]). Because of the preferential tax treatment accorded homeowners, particularly low-income
homeowners, and the large degree of wealth accumulated in housing, these authors argue that it is
important to know the full range of homeownership benefits and costs.

However, given the

difficulty of credibly assigning causality to housing externalities, it is not surprising that such
factors have been previously ignored.
In one such paper, Green and White [5] find a strong statistical correlation between
homeownership and the likelihood of dropping out of school or becoming pregnant.

Yet a

reasonable interpretation of their result is that of omitted variable bias. Clearly, homeowners are
different from renters along a variety of dimensions. As a result, those factors that are latent in their
work, such as parental skills, interest in the educational process, wealth, and family stability,
potentially bias upward any homeownership effect. While the authors claim that their results are
robust to parametric self-selection corrections, these techniques require assumptions about the
selection equation that are difficult to defend.
However, beyond pure selection, there are several mechanisms that suggest that this could
be a causal relationship.

Most plausibly, homeowners have a large financial stake in their

community and therefore may invest more in neighborhood and school capital. Epple and Romer
[4] and DiPasquale and Glaeser [3] have modeled the different incentives faced by owners and
renters.

For our purposes, the key insight is that landlords recoup any community-specific

investment that is made by renters, while homeowners are able to internalize the future returns to
these investments because they accrue as increases in the value of their home.

2

Therefore,

homeowners have a much stronger incentive to participate in the growth of neighborhood capital.
In fact, DiPasquale and Glaeser find that homeownership has a causal effect on community
investment.

As investment in a community grows, it is possible that children’s educational

outcomes will improve, perhaps providing the missing link in the neighborhood effects literature.
On the other hand, time and money committed to neighborhood and housing investment might be
offset by reduced input into family-specific investments that have a more direct payoff to children’s
outcomes. For example, Currie and Yelowitz [2] argue that public housing has a positive effect on
school retention because subsidized housing allows money to be directed to other family needs.
An alternative but related mechanism works through family residential stability. Several
recent papers, including Hanushek, Kain and Rivkin [6], McLanahan and Sandefur [8], Astone and
McLanahan [1], and Haveman, Wolfe, and Spaulding [7], explore the impact of family or school
mobility on student achievement. They argue that residential mobility might be causal if it leads to
a loss of social capital in the form of less information and attachment to the school system, teachers,
and peers.1 The most compelling evidence is presented in Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin, who, using
individual fixed effect models, find that residential or school moving has a significant negative
impact on student achievement, particularly for minorities, low income families and students in
schools with high turnover. Thus the homeownership effect may be the result of additional family
and school stability offered to students who do not have to switch schools or peer groups.
This brief note uses a number of methods to determine whether homeownership is a
statistically meaningful factor in predicting children’s educational outcomes.

No structural

estimates of children’s attainment are presented, and therefore these results are susceptible to
criticism about the causal nature of this relationship. Instead, the paper augments the work of Green
and White by estimating more detailed reduced form specifications of the homeownership effect. I

1

But there may be costs to homeownership if owners are less able to move in response to income shocks (Oswald [9]).
3

employ a fuller set of background variables that are plausibly correlated with homeownership and
the error term in an educational attainment regression. Furthermore, instrumental variable estimates
are presented that attempt to solve problems associated homeownership and mobility endogeneity.
The results suggest that the homeownership effect is fairly robust in a simple regression
framework, although some of the effect is likely due to difficult-to-measure family characteristics
and much of the remaining effect works through its impact on lowering the probability of moving.
Like Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin, these effects appear to be concentrated among low-income
households and neighborhoods with lower mobility rates.
Data
This analysis uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and its accompanying
geocode database. All children that reach the age of 17 between 1975 and 1993 are included in the
sample so long as they are observed for at least six years between ages 7 and 16. This latter
restriction allows a full description of the family and neighborhood background experienced by the
child. The dependent variable is an indicator of whether the individual graduated from high school
by age 19.

The standard individual and family control variables are included in all of the

regressions to follow. These include the race and gender of the child, whether the child is in a
stepfamily, the parents’ education, family income, whether the head worked in the last year, family
composition, and the number of kids in the family. Time dummies are included to capture secular
trends in schooling. The time varying variables are averaged over ages 7 to 16 to more fully capture
the history of the child’s background (Wolfe et. al. [13]). Additional variables that are used in the
analysis include the residential mobility of the family, home equity and value, and various asset
measures from the 1984 and 1989 wealth supplements.
The PSID analysis is augmented by information from the geocode database, which includes
detailed geographic information on residential location in zip codes, census tracts, and enumeration

4

districts from 1968 to 1985. These locations are linked to population and housing characteristics
from the 1970 and 1980 census. Therefore, this dataset allows construction of duration measures
related to time in the community, as well as the mobility of neighbors.
Results
Some of the partial derivatives from probit regressions similar in spirit to Green and White
are presented in table 1. Full regression results are available upon request. Some differences
between our specifications make direct comparison difficult. The most important difference is in
our choice of dependent variable. I use a discrete variable that equals one if the child graduates
from high school by age 19, while Green and White use a discrete variable that equals one if the
child is still in school at age 17. My sample encompasses kids who turn 17 between 1975 and 1993,
while Green and White concentrate on the 1980 to 1987 period.

Finally, as already noted,

homeownership, family composition, family income, and head’s work status are averaged over ages
7 to 16, while their variables are measured at age 17.
Although some of our coefficients differ (not shown), the homeownership derivative is of
comparable magnitude and significance. In a simple probit framework, the marginal impact of
living in owner occupied housing on the probability of high school graduation is 9.6 (1.5) percent
for a base case child who is white and male, and lives in a household with married parents, two
siblings, average income, and a head that is a high school graduate.2 This is displayed in column 1.
The Role of Observable Family Characteristics
While the regression includes gender, race, family status, parents’ age, head’s education,
family size, family composition, marital status, and work status controls, other confounding factors

2

Using the ‘in school by age 17’ variable does not change any of the results noticeably. If anything, the findings are
smaller but in-line with those reported by Green and White. Using a homeownership indicator measured at age 17, like
Green and White, the marginal effect is 7.7 percent.
5

may be driving this large homeownership finding. In particular, four possibilities are explored:
family status changes, parental involvement, residential stability, and wealth.
Perhaps the most obvious explanation for the homeownership effect is the impact of family
stability and involvement, both factors that may be correlated with homeownership and children’s
educational attainment. While the PSID is somewhat limiting in its ability to measure parental
involvement, it thoroughly documents changes in household marital, work, and family composition
history. When detailed indicators of the timing and frequency of marital, work, and family size
changes are included, they have little impact on the homeownership estimates.3
To explore the impact of parental involvement, I matched the National Longitudinal
Surveys’ older men and older women files, which include home ownership questions, to the
younger men and younger women files to take advantage of the unique family information reported
in these surveys. In particular, there is information on IQ scores, PTA involvement, and whether a
newspaper and library card is in the house at age 14. The homeownership effect is similar to that in
the PSID and none of the additional variables affect its magnitude.
Third, I include measures of the frequency of residential moves and the duration of
residential and neighborhood residence. After controlling for the fraction of years moved between
ages 7 and 16, almost one half of the homeownership effect disappears, as shown in column 2.
Columns 3 and 4 explore the possibility that the distance of the move is important by measuring the
additional impact of switching zip codes or states. The results in column 3 suggest that there is no
additional impact of moving across zip code relative to within zip code. However, long distance
changes, as represented by across state moves have a positive and large effect, enough to suggest no
statistically significant mobility effect for those children who cross state borders.

3

This result

This is consistent with Haveman, Wolfe, and Spaulding [7], who find little difference in their mobility point estimates
when a host of family and individual controls are added to a high school graduation regression equation.

6

suggests that unobservable differences, such as the reason for a move, between across state and
within state movers are important. Further evidence on this point is given below. Column 5 shows
that longer residential duration has an additional positive impact on educational attainment, even
after conditioning on mobility frequency. Finally, column 6 reports mobility effects separately for
homeowners and renters. Homeowner family mobility is calculated in the “% years moved as
homeowner” variable. Mobility for families that rent are captured in the “% years moved as renter”
variable. For families that switch housing status, a “% years moved as homeowner” variable is
computed for the years that they were homeowners and a “% years moved as renter” variable is
calculated for their renter years. This categorization reveals that mobility hurts both homeowners’
and renters’ children. Furthermore, a t-test of the difference between the homeowner and renter
coefficients cannot reject that they are the same.
However, while I include a variety of family background controls in the basic regressions, it
is reasonable to interpret part of the large residential mobility effect to be due to latent
characteristics, especially in light of the state mobility findings. One hint that this is so comes from
the self-reported reasons for residential moves. The PSID asks household heads the primary reason
for a residential change. Possible answers are job-related (to get nearer to work, to take another job,
or because of a transfer), consumption-related (housing expansion/contraction, more/less rent, want
to own home), neighborhood-related (better neighborhood or school, closer to friends/relatives), or
outside events (evicted, armed services, health reasons, divorce, retiring because of health). A small
fraction of respondents give ambiguous or mixed reasons. This response is lumped into the outside
events category.

Decomposing mobility factors by reason, the largest impact of mobility on

children’s education is from other/mixed reasons and the smallest from job reasons, although even
job related moves have a negative impact on the likelihood of high school graduation.
Nevertheless, the large other/mixed reason effect suggests that unobservables may still play a key

7

role in the correlation between homeownership and mobility, despite the reasonably long list of
control variables. For example, if the move variable counts only the other/mixed responses, the
homeownership effect declines from 9.6 to 7.8 percent. Therefore, latent family stability factors
explain at least a fifth of the homeownership effect.
homeownership effect another 3 percentage points.

Including all reasons reduces the

Therefore, an additional two-fifths of the

homeownership effect could be from lowering the probability of residential changes.
A fourth explanation for the homeownership effect is that, all else equal, homeowners are
wealthier and therefore can afford better schooling opportunities for their children. Time-averaged
family income and the head’s educational attainment capture part of this wealth effect.
Nevertheless, table 2 reports the homeownership and mobility partial derivatives when additional
controls for home equity and other assets and debts are added to the regression specification. The
results tentatively suggest that part of the homeownership effect is due to higher levels of home
equity. That is, homeownership has a larger impact on children’s outcomes for those with home
equity at the top of the distribution. Depending on which home equity measure is employed, the
difference in high school graduation likelihood between households at the 90th and 10th percentile of
home equity is 4 to 4.5 percentage points.4
The home equity effect might arise for two reasons. First, households with bigger stakes in
their home may invest more in their community. Second, the home equity differences may simply
be wealth differences that are correlated with other family characteristics that affect children’s well
being. It is difficult to decompose the wealth and consumption aspects of housing. But detailed
wealth information of some of the households is available during the second half of the sample
period. In table 2, I use the 1984 and 1989 wealth supplement of the PSID to estimate whether
other asset measures are correlated with children’s educational outcomes. The sample is restricted

8

to children who turn 17 between 1984 and 1993. All children who turn 17 between 1985 and 1989
are set to their households’1984 assets and all children who turn 17 between 1990 and 1993 to their
household’s 1989 assets. These results suggest that the only asset measures adding explanatory
power are housing, and to a much less extent vehicle, equity. Controls for debt, other real estate,
cash, stocks and bonds, and pensions (not shown), are insignificant in high school graduation
equations. This suggests that the home equity effect may be more than a wealth effect.
Does Neighborhood Stability Matter?
An interesting test of the mobility-homeownership effect is whether neighbor mobility
matters. If this is a story about peer or school stability, the residential stability of neighbors could
be important as well, all else equal.

Table 3 stratifies the sample by the fraction of the

neighborhood that has lived in the same residence during the previous five years. In columns 1 to 3,
the sample includes those children who grew up in communities with ‘neighborhood stability’
below the median (58 percent), and columns 4 to 6 report analogous results for children who grew
up in neighborhoods above the median. Looking first at the highly mobile communities, the 6.2
(2.0) percent homeownership effect that is reported in column 1 disappears when controlling for
household residential duration measures in columns 2 and 3.

However, the low mobility

neighborhoods show a much stronger and robust homeownership effect, even after controlling for
duration. Wald statistics reported at the bottom of the table suggest that the homeownership and
mobility effects are stronger in low mobility communities, consistent with the notion that changes in
peer groups and stable environments positively impact the educational outcomes of children.
Certainly, this neighborhood stability effect could be confounding other characteristics, such
as school quality and neighborhood wealth. But table 4 shows that the neighborhood mobility result
does not appear to be a neighborhood income effect. Without controls for mobility, the graduation
4

Column 2 uses the house equity measure that is asked annually in the PSID. Columns 3 to 8 use asset information
9

effect of growing up in an owner-occupied home is approximately 12 percent (0.038) in a low
income (bottom quintile) community but only 4.2 percent (2.4) in a high income (top quintile)
community. These point estimates are significantly different at the 10 percent level. Controlling
for mobility and residential duration measures eliminates the homeownership effect in high income
neighborhoods but not low income neighborhoods. Although the mobility and duration measures
eliminate over 40 percent of the homeownership effect in low-income communities, the
homeownership effect of 6.7 (4.0) percent is still significant at the 10 percent level. Furthermore,
the -0.238 (0.094) point estimate of the mobility effect for low income neighborhoods is quite a bit
stronger than the –0.100 (0.053) point estimate in high income neighborhoods, although because of
a lack of precision of the estimates, we cannot reject the null that the estimates are equal. Finally,
column 6 shows that most of the mobility effect in high income neighborhoods is due to the other
reasons category, suggesting that unobservable family changes are driving any mobility/homeowner
effect for the high income communities. Therefore, we conclude that the stable neighborhood result
is not a proxy for high income, and thus probably not high school quality, communities.
Instrumental Variable Results
An obvious concern with the probit results is that homeownership and residential mobility
are endogenous.

Both characteristics are likely correlated with latent measures of children’s

educational attainment.

However, finding a valid instrument is difficult.

To deal with the

endogeneity of homeownership, I use the strategy adopted in DiPasquale and Glaeser [3]. These
authors employ group average homeownership rates as instruments. The homeownership rates are
formed by taking state-year average homeownership rates by race and income quintile using the
March CPS surveys.5 The idea is that average homeownership rates may pick up regional variation

from the 1984 and 1989 wealth supplements.
5
The CPS is used instead of the PSID for sample size reasons. However, homeownership questions began in the March
CPS in 1977, so the 1968 to 1976 rates are held constant at the 1977 level.
10

that is driven by housing costs, property tax rates, interest rates, and other secular trends in housing.
Differences in housing rates across regions and income-race groups should differ in ways that are
unrelated to the unobservable components of children’s’ educational outcomes. As an instrument
for residential mobility between ages 7 and 16, I use family mobility rates prior to the child turning
age 5. These pre-school moves are likely to predict future recurrences of family mobility but may
not impact the child’s school progress. As far as these assumptions are incorrect, the instruments
are invalid. Statistics on the relevance of these instruments, along with the results, are reported in
table 5.6 Two regressions, one that includes homeownership and one that includes homeownership
and residential mobility, are shown for five samples: the full, the low and high income
neighborhood, and the low and high mobility neighborhood samples. Estimates are calculated using
Rivers-Vuong [10] two step maximum likelihood procedure with bootstrapped standard errors.
As expected, the estimates are smaller than the simple probit and, with only one exception,
are statistically insignificant after controlling for residential mobility. For example, among the full
sample of children, the two-stage estimate reduces the effect of homeownership from 9.6 (1.5)
percent in the simple probit case reported in table 1 to 7.1 (1.9) percent. Including the mobility
measure reduces the homeownership effect to an insignificant 3.6 (2.6) percent. However, even this
estimate cannot be statistically distinguished from the simple probit estimate of 5.4 (1.6) percent.
Likewise, among the low and high income neighborhood and high mobility neighborhood samples,
the two-stage estimates reduce the estimated homeownership effect slightly, but after controlling for
6

Table 5 reports partial R2 and F-statistics of the instruments from the first stage regressions, as well as Davidson-

MacKinnon χ statistics from reduced form high school graduation equations that include the instruments. The
Davidson-MacKinnon test suggest that probits are not appropriate, especially when the endogeneity of mobility and
homeownership are jointly tested (the even columns). As for the relevance of the instruments, state homeownership
rates appear to be highly correlated with individual homeownership (with a point estimate of roughly 1.0 and a standard
error of 0.05) in the full sample. The F-statistic of the state homeownership instrument, over 200 for the full sample,
indicates that we should reject the hypothesis that the instrument coefficients are equal to zero. This easily exceeds the
minimum F-statistic standard of 10 set by Staiger and Stock [12]. The partial R2 for this instrument is approximately
0.05 to 0.06. The pre-school mobility measure also easily exceed minimum F-statistic and partial R2 thresholds. These
test statistics suggest that the instruments may be useful for identification purposes.
2

11

mobility, this effect is not statistically different from zero. The lone exception is the low mobility
neighborhood sample. When including household mobility controls, a statistically significant 5.7
(1.6) percent homeownership effect remains. Therefore, the evidence suggests that homeownership
endogeneity may be important, especially in higher turnover communities. But given the strong
impact of residential mobility, even after attempts to correct for endogeneity, homeownership as a
means of reducing community turnover may still be important to children’s educational outcomes.7
Conclusions
This brief note adds to recent work that attempts to identify homeownership externalities.
The results suggest that some of the homeownership effect found in Green and White [5] is driven
by family characteristics associated with homeownership, especially residential stability. As much
as homeownership increases residential stability, it appears to be correlated with higher school
attainment. Attempts to control for endogeneity, however imperfect, cannot eliminate this finding.
This work compliments the findings in Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin [6] that document losses in
achievement in early grades from school mobility. Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that there
are costs to housing investment that may counterbalance any positive externalities from housing
investment. Most importantly, time and money committed to neighborhood capital and housing
investment might be offset by reduced input into family-specific investments that have a more
direct payoff to children’s outcomes. Therefore, future research should attempt to understand why
it is that this correlation exists and whether it can justify policy attempts to subsidize housing.

7

An alternative method to control for family-specific unobservables is to identify the homeownership effect using
sibling data. Conditional fixed effect logit models allow identification of within-family variation in homeownership
status. However, caution must be used in interpreting the results since other family changes over time that affect the
educational success of the siblings differentially may be correlated with switches in homeownership. I use
homeownership variables measured at four different ages – 10, 12, 14 ,and 16. In three of the four cases, the
homeownership coefficient is significant and the same magnitude as OLS when no mobility controls are included.
Once mobility is added, none of the homeownership coefficients are statistically different from zero.
12

Bibliography

1. Astone, Nan and Sara McLanahan, Family Structure, Residential Mobility, and School Dropout:
A Research Note, Demography, 31, 575-584 (1994).
2. Currie, Janet and Aaron Yelowitz, Are Public Housing Projects Good for Kids? NBER working
paper 6305, (1998).
3. DiPasquale, Denise and Edward Glaeser, Incentives and Social Capital: Are Homeowners Better
Citizens? Journal of Urban Economics, 45, 354-384 (1999).
4. Epple, Dennis and Thomas Romer, Mobility and Redistribution, Journal of Political Economy,
99, 828-858 (1991).
5. Green, Richard and Michelle White, Measuring the Benefits of Homeownership: Effects on
Children, Journal of Urban Economics, 41, 441-461 (1997).
6. Hanushek, Eric, John Kain, and Steven Rivkin, The Cost of Switching Schools, Mimeo,
University of Rochester, (1999).
7. Haveman, Robert, Barbara Wolfe and James Spaulding, Childhood Events and Curcumstances
Influencing High School Completion, Demography, 28, 133-157 (1991).
8. McLanahan, Sara and Gary Sandefur, “Growing Up with a Single Parent,” Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, MA (1994).
9. Oswald, Andrew, A Conjecture on the Explanation for High Unemployment in the
Industrialized Nations: Part I, Mimeo, University of Warwick (1997).
10. Rivers, Douglas and Quang Vuong, Limited Information Estimators and Exogeneity Tests for
Simultaneous Probit Models, Journal of Econometrics, 39, 347-366 (1988).
11. Rossi, Peter and Eleanor Weber, The Social Benefits of Homeownership: Empirical Evidence
from National Surveys, Housing Policy Debate, 7, 1-35 (1996).
12. Staiger, Douglas and James Stock, “Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments,”
NBER technical working paper 151, (1994).
13. Wolfe, Barbara and Robert Haveman, Donna Ginther, and Choong Bung An, The ‘Windows
Problem’in Studies of Children’s Attainments: A Methodological Exploration, Journal of the
American Statistical Association, 91, 970-982 (1996).

13

Table 1
The effect
of adding
duration
and
mobility
measures
to the
homeown
ership
effect 1
Partial
derivatives
(standard
error in
parenthes
es)

homeowner, age 7-16

Dependen
t variable:
whether
child
graduated
from high
school by
age 19
(4)

(1)

(2)

(3)

0.096
(0.015)

0.054
(0.016)

0.054
(0.017)

0.055
(0.017)

-0.214
(0.029)

-0.223
(0.038)
-0.011

-0.257
(0.032)

max. duration in
residence, 7-16
% years moved, 7-16
% years changed zip
code, 7-16

(5)

(6)

0.052
(0.016)
0.002

0.046
(0.018)
0.002

0.048
(0.016)
0.002

(0.001)
-0.175
(0.034)

(0.001)

(0.001)

(0.045)
% years changed
state, 7-16

0.207
(0.086)

% years moved as
homeowner

-0.125
(0.060)
-0.216

% years moved as
renter

(0.044)
% years job moves,
7-16

-0.127
(0.059)
-0.208

% years consumption
moves, 7-16

(0.053)
-0.227

% years
neighborhood moves,
7-16
14

(0.164)
-0.266

% years other/mixed
moves, 7-16

(0.069)

Sample size
Log likelihood

5,143
-2,740

5,143
-2,711

4,926
-2,598

Notes:

1 Regressions control for family
income, dummy variables for

year, race, gender, race*gender,
step family, young birth (child
born to parent under age 18),

household head's
education, number in
family, female
household headed
family, household
head's marital status,
and household head's
work status.
All time varying
control variables are
averaged over age 7
to 16. The marginal
effects are calculated
for a male child in a 4
member white family
in 1984
with two parents,
average
income,where the
household head is
continuously working
and is a high school
graduate. All mobility
and duration
variables
are measured at the
mean.
Table 2
The effect
of adding
other
wealth
measures
to the
homeown
ership
effect

15

4,926
-2,595

5,143
-2,707

5,143
-2,707

5,143
-2,702

Partial
derivatives
(standard
error in
parenthes
es)

homeowner, age 7-16
max. duration in
residence, 7-16
% years moved, 7-16

(1)

(2)

(3)

0.063
(0.029)
0.001

0.031
(0.035)
0.001

0.045
(0.032)
0.001

(0.002)
-0.170
(0.059)

(0.002)
-0.174
(0.061)
0.009

(0.001)
-0.176
(0.064)

house equity, age 716 /10,000

Dependen
t variable:
whether
child
graduated
from high
school by
age 19
(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

0.062
(0.030)
0.001

0.063
(0.029)
0.001

0.063
(0.029)
0.001

0.064
(0.029)
0.001

0.060
(0.031)
0.001

(0.002)
-0.172
(0.061)

(0.002)
-0.169
(0.059)

(0.002)
-0.169
(0.059)

(0.002)
-0.169
(0.059)

(0.002)
-0.183
(0.065)

(0.006)
-0.0004

house equity
squared, age 7-16

(0.0004)
home equity (from
asset survey) /
10,000

0.012

(0.006)
-0.0006
(0.0003)

home equity squared
total assets / 100,000

0.010
(0.009)
-0.0001
(0.0002)

total assets squared
total assets less
home equity /
100,000

0.012

(0.011)
-0.0001

total assets less
home equity squared

(0.0003)
total debt / 10,000

0.002
(0.037)
-0.004
(0.007)

total debt squared
total other real estate
/ 10,000

-0.004
(0.004)
0.0001

total other real estate
squared

16

(0.0001)
total vehicle assets /
10,000

0.041
(0.019)
-0.003

total vehicle assets
squared

(0.002)
Log likelihood

-1,068

-1,066

-1,065

-1,067

-1,066

-1,067

-1,067

Notes: See table 1.
Asset data comes
from 1984 and 1989
supplements. Kids
who turn 17 during
1985 to 1989 are
assigned the 1984
value.
Kids who turn 17
between 1990 and
1994 are assigned
the 1989 asset value.
All asset values are in
real terms. Sample
size is 2,062 for all
columns.
Table 3
Homeown
ership
effects by
neighborh
ood
mobility
Partial
derivatives
(standard
error in
parenthes
es)

(1)
homeowner, age 7-16

High
mobility
neighborh
oods
(2)

0.062
(0.020)

max. duration in
residence, 7-16
% years moved, 7-16
% years moved as
homeowner

17

(3)

(4)

0.025
(0.021)
0.0004

0.025
(0.023)
0.0007

0.140
(0.026)

(0.0011)
-0.090
(0.028)

(0.0014)

Low
mobility
neighborh
oods
(5)

(6)

0.091
(0.027)
0.0033

0.090
(0.027)
0.0032

(0.0014)
-0.287
(0.063)

(0.0014)

-1,065

% years moved as
renter
% years job moves,
7-16
% years consumption
moves, 7-16
% years
neighborhood moves,
7-16
% years other/mixed
moves, 7-16

-0.059

-0.222

(0.069)
-0.149

(0.112)
-0.294

(0.062)
-0.205

(0.102)
-0.311

(0.198)
-0.188

(0.314)
-0.479

(0.082)

(0.137)

Wald statistic of
differences between
samples:
homeowner, age 716
max. duration in
residence, 7-16
% years moved, 716
Sample size
Log likelihood

5.9

3.8

3.3

2.8

1.5

8.1

2,545
-1,376

2,545
-1,367

2,545
-1,365

2,355
-1,211

Notes: See table 1.
Low (high) mobility
neighborhoods are
defined as the bottom
(top) half of the
sample. The
evaluation of partial
effects
use the means for
the income and
mobility variables
separately for each
stratified sample.
Table 4
Homeown
ership
effects by
neighborh
ood
18

2,355
-1,209

2,355
-1,182

income
level
Partial
derivatives
(standard
error in
parenthes
es)

(1)
homeowner, age 7-16

Low
income
neighborh
oods
(2)

0.120
(0.038)

max. duration in
residence, 7-16
% years moved, 7-16

High
income
neighborh
oods
(5)

(3)

(4)

0.074
(0.040)
0.004

0.067
(0.040)
0.004

0.042
(0.024)

(0.002)
-0.238
(0.094)

(0.002)

(6)

0.009
(0.026)
0.001

0.005
(0.024)
0.001

(0.001)
-0.100
(0.053)

(0.001)

% years moved as
homeowner
% years moved as
renter
% years job moves,
7-16
% years consumption
moves, 7-16
% years
neighborhood moves,
7-16
% years other/mixed
moves, 7-16

0.071

0.013

(0.169)
-0.396

(0.090)
-0.068

(0.152)
-0.621

(0.082)
-0.099

(0.512)
-0.399

(0.270)
-0.293

(0.218)

(0.108)

Wald statistic of
differences between
samples:
homeowner, age 716
max. duration in
residence, 7-16
% years moved, 716
Sample size
Log likelihood

3.1

1.9

1.8

1.4

1.3

1.6

1,199
-694

1,199
-685

19

1,199
-682

1,212
-494

1,212
-490

1,212
-487

Notes: See table 1.
Low (high) income
neighborhoods are
defined as the bottom
(top) half of the
sample. The
evaluation of partial
effects
use the means for
the income and
mobility variables
separately for each
stratified sample.

Table 5
Instrument
al
variables
estimates1
Partial
derivatives
(standard
error in
parenthes
es)

Neighborhood
sample:
homeowner, age 7-16

Full

Full

Low
income

Low
income

High
income

High
income

Low
mobility

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

0.071
(0.019)

0.036
(0.026)
-0.230
(0.050)

0.106
(0.059)

0.076
(0.068)
-0.366
(0.142)

0.036
(0.019)

0.024
(0.034)
-0.114
(0.053)

0.057
(0.016)

0.050
(0.024)
-0.190
(0.043)

1.3

0.5

1,181
-571

1,181
-561

% years moved, 7-16

Wald statistic of
differences between
samples:
homeowner, age 716
% years moved, 716

Sample size
Log likelihood

2.8

2,481
-1,265

2,481
-1,255

20

531
-299

531
-295

620
-238

620
-235

Partial R2 from
instruments 2

0.053

0.060

0.076

0.075

0.088

0.085

0.060

0.061

F-statistic of
instruments 2

216.1

0.069
126.5

72.1

0.045
36.0

65.6

0.074
43.0

116.6

0.055
59.6

Davidson-MacKinnon
chi2 statistic

3.9

107.9
14.6

3.6

15.7
9.3

2.9

31.0
13.8

2.4

41.6
1.9

Instruments:
state
homeownership
mobility age 0-5

x

x
x

Notes:

1 See tables 1, 3 and 4.

Instrumental variable estimates
use homeownership rate by stateyear-race-income quintile and
household mobility

at ages 0 to 5 as the
identitying
instruments.Standard
errors are calculated
using a bootstrap with
500 replications. Full
sample includes
neighborhood data
which is available
through 1985.
2 First row reports partial R2 and
F-statistics from homeownership
equation and second row reports
partial R2 and F-statistics

from mobility
equation.

21

x

x
x

x

x
x

x

22

23

24