IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedpwp/07-33.html

Net worth and housing equity in retirement

Author

Abstract

This paper documents the trends in the life-cycle profiles of net worth and housing equity between 1983 and 2004. The net worth of older households significantly increased during the housing boom of recent years. However, net worth grew by more than housing equity, in part because other assets also appreciated at the same time. Moreover, the younger elderly offset rising house prices by increasing their housing debt, and used some of the proceeds to invest in other assets. The authors also consider how much of their housing equity older households can actually tap, using reverse mortgages. This fraction is lower at younger ages, such that young retirees can consume less than half of their housing equity. These results imply that ?consumable? net worth is smaller than standard calculations of net worth.

Suggested Citation

  • Todd M. Sinai & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2007. "Net worth and housing equity in retirement," Working Papers 07-33, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:07-33
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/working-papers/2007/wp07-33.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hui Shan, 2011. "Reversing the Trend: The Recent Expansion of the Reverse Mortgage Market," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 39(4), pages 743-768, December.
    2. Edward L. Glaeser & Charles G. Nathanson, 2014. "Housing Bubbles," NBER Working Papers 20426, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Baulkaran, Vishaal & Jain, Pawan, 2024. "Home equity and retirement funding: Challenges and opportunities," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    4. Rogelio J. Cardona & Karen C. Castro-Gonzalez, 2014. "A Comparative Analysis of Reverse Mortgages: Evidence from Puerto Rico and the United States," Global Journal of Business Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 8(5), pages 41-57.
    5. Stephanie Moulton & Donald Haurin & Samuel Dodini & Maximilian D. Schmeiser, 2016. "How Home Equity Extraction and Reverse Mortgages Affect the Credit Outcomes of Senior Households," Working Papers wp351, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    6. Sandrine Juin, 2016. "Care for dependent elderly people : dealing with health and financing issues," Erudite Ph.D Dissertations, Erudite, number ph16-02 edited by Thomas Barnay, December.
    7. Alexandra Spicer & Olena Stavrunova & Susan Thorp, 2016. "How Portfolios Evolve after Retirement: Evidence from Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 92(297), pages 241-267, June.
    8. Daniel Barczyk & Sean Fahle & Matthias Kredler, 2023. "Save, Spend, or Give? A Model of Housing, Family Insurance, and Savings in Old Age," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(5), pages 2116-2187.
    9. Alicia H. Munnell & Mauricio Soto, 2008. "The Housing Bubble and Retirement Security," Issues in Brief ib2008-8-12, Center for Retirement Research, revised Aug 2008.
    10. Hyrum Smith & Michael Finke & Sandra Huston, 2012. "Financial Sophistication and Housing Leverage Among Older Households," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 315-327, September.
    11. Carole Bonnet & Sandrine Juin & Anne Laferrère, 2019. "Private Financing of Long‑Term Care: Income, Savings and Reverse Mortgages," Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), issue 507-508, pages 5-24.
    12. Renata Bottazzi & Tullio Jappelli & Mario Padula, 2009. "The Portfolio Effect of Pension Reforms," Working Papers 2009_17, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    13. Jingjing Yan, 2018. "The Heterogenous Impact of Fluctuation of Housing Prices upon Consumption of Urban Households in China," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 8(6), pages 1-8.
    14. Susan Thorp & Hardy Hulley & Rebecca McKibbin & Andreas Pedersen, 2009. "Means-Tested Income Support, Portfolio Choice and Decumulation in Retirement," Research Paper Series 248, Quantitative Finance Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney.
    15. Yogo, Motohiro, 2016. "Portfolio choice in retirement: Health risk and the demand for annuities, housing, and risky assets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 17-34.
    16. James M. Poterba & Steven F. Venti & David A. Wise, 2010. "Demographic Trends, Housing Equity, and the Financial Security of Future Retirees," NBER Chapters, in: Demography and the Economy, pages 227-287, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:07-33. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Beth Paul (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbphus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.