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Working Paper
Housing wealth and consumption
Housing wealth is about one half of household net worth, and consumption is a considerable fraction (about two thirds) of Gross Domestic Product in the United States. Empirically, movements in housing wealth are associated with movements in consumption in the same direction. This observation has led many economists, commentators and policy makers to study how housing wealth and consumption are linked together. A sizeable portion of the comovement between housing wealth and consumption reflects common factors driving both variables, rather than the "wealth effect" of the former on the ...
Journal Article
Why did young families lose so much wealth during the crisis? the role of homeownership
The authors use the Federal Reserve?s Survey of Consumer Finances to document a boom in home ownership and mortgage borrowing among young families in the years leading up to the recent financial crisis. Many young families lost more of their wealth during the downturn than middle-aged and older families. The authors find that about three-quarters of the decline in the average young family?s wealth between 2007 and 2010 was due to its exposure to residential real estate. For middle-aged and older families, housing losses contributed about 53 percent and 40 percent of the total decline in ...