No. 272 Housing Choices and Labor Income Risk

By Thomas Jansson

August 2013

Abstract

I show that individuals whose unemployment risk tends to increase more when local home prices fall optimally invest less in owner-occupied housing. Using a unique, Swedish register based database, I find that a one standard deviation increase in the covariance between individually estimated unemployment risks and local home prices implies an average increase in the value of households investments in owner-occupied housing of USD 13,300. Further, I find, in line with the predictions of my theoretical model, that same-industry couples rent more often, but, conditional on ownership, invest USD 9,200 more on average in single-family homes than different-industry couples.

JEL classifications:

D12, D14, R21

Keywords:

homeownership, housing demand, unemployment, house price risk