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Owner-Occupied Housing and the Composition of the Household Portfolio over the Life Cycle

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Author Info
Marjorie Flavin
Takashi Yamashita
Abstract

The paper studies the impact of the portfolio constraint imposed by the consumption demand for housing (the "housing constraint") on the household's optimal holdings of financial assets. Since the ratio of housing to net worth declines as the household accumulates wealth, the housing constraint induces a life-cycle pattern in the portfolio shares of stocks and bonds. For reasonable degrees of risk aversion, the changes in portfolio composition over the life-cycle can be dramatic. For example, for a coefficient of relative risk aversion of 3, the ratio of stocks to net worth in the optimal portfolio is .09 for the youngest households (ages 18-30) and .60 for the oldest (age 70 and over).

Using data from the PSID on home values to construct household level panel data on the real after-tax return to owner-occupied housing, as well as data on the returns to financial assets, the paper estimates the vector of expected returns and the covariance matrix for the set of assets consisting of housing, mortgages, stocks, Treasury bonds, and T-bills. Numerical methods are used to calculate the mean-variance efficient frontier, conditional on different values of the housing constraint, and the optimal portfolios associated with different levels of relative risk aversion.

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Paper provided by Department of Economics, UC San Diego in its series University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series with number 98-02.

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Date of creation: Jan 1998
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Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsdec:98-02

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

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    Other versions:
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    Other versions:
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    Other versions:
  6. Mervyn A. King & Jonathan I. Leape, 1987. "Asset Accumulation, Information, and the Life Cycle," NBER Working Papers 2392, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Grossman, Sanford J & Shiller, Robert J, 1981. "The Determinants of the Variability of Stock Market Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(2), pages 222-27, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  8. Blake, David, 1996. "Efficiency, Risk Aversion and Portfolio Insurance: An Analysis of Financial Asset Portfolios Held by Investors in the United Kingdom," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(438), pages 1175-92, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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    Other versions:
  13. Ioannides, Yannis M, 1992. "Dynamics of the Composition of Household Asset Portfolios and the Life Cycle," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 2(3), pages 145-59, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Engelhardt, Gary V., 1996. "House prices and home owner saving behavior," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3-4), pages 313-336, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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    Other versions:
  19. Barsky, Robert B, et al, 1997. "Preference Parameters and Behavioral Heterogeneity: An Experimental Approach in the Health and Retirement Study," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 112(2), pages 537-79, May.
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    Other versions:
  21. Ross, Stephen A & Zisler, Randall C, 1991. "Risk and Return in Real Estate," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 175-90, June.
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Sebastian Barnes & Garry Young, . "The rise in US household debt: assessing its causes and sustainability," Bank of England working papers 206, Bank of England. [Downloadable!]
  2. Ji, Tingting, 2004. "Essays on consumer portfolio choice and credit risk," MPRA Paper 3161, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  3. Carol Bertaut & Martha Starr-McCluer, 2000. "Household portfolios in the United States," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2000-26, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  4. Fuad Hasanov & Douglas Dacy, 2005. "Measuring and Analyzing Returns on Aggregate Residential Housing," Finance 0510005, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
  5. Joseph Nichols, 2004. "A Life-cycle Model with Housing, Portfolio Allocation, and Mortgage Financing," Econometric Society 2004 North American Winter Meetings 205, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
  6. Ji, Tingting, 2004. "Consumer Credit Delinquency And Bankruptcy Forecasting Using Advanced Econometrc Modeling," MPRA Paper 3187, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  7. Andersson, Björn, 2001. "Portfolio Allocation over the Life Cycle: Evidence from Swedish Household Data," Working Paper Series 2001:4, Uppsala University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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