IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/125715.html

Housing Wealth Management at Retirement

Author

Listed:
  • Heilbron, John

Abstract

This paper estimates the e ect of retirement on the liquidation of housing assets. I use programmatic Social Security eligibility thresholds to instrument for retirement and find that retirement makes a household 12% more likely to issue any new mortgage debt and 3% more likely to extract equity from a home within the following two years. Retirement-induced housing wealth liquidation increases liquid balances to a greater extent than does ordinary housing wealth liquidation; this evidence is consistent with retirement-induced refinancing being a pro-active planning decision rather than a response to adverse expense shocks. Evidence on specific household motives for liquidating housing wealth is mixed.

Suggested Citation

  • Heilbron, John, 2019. "Housing Wealth Management at Retirement," MPRA Paper 125715, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:125715
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/125715/1/MPRA_paper_125715.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Liebman, Jeffrey B. & Luttmer, Erzo F.P. & Seif, David G., 2009. "Labor supply responses to marginal Social Security benefits: Evidence from discontinuities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1208-1223, December.
    2. Makoto Nakajima & Irina A. Telyukova, 2020. "Home Equity In Retirement," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 61(2), pages 573-616, May.
    3. Jonathan D. Fisher & David S. Johnson & Joseph T. Marchand & Timothy M. Smeeding & Barbara Boyle Torrey, 2007. "No Place Like Home: Older Adults and Their Housing," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 62(2), pages 120-128.
    4. Hurst, Erik & Stafford, Frank, 2004. "Home Is Where the Equity Is: Mortgage Refinancing and Household Consumption," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(6), pages 985-1014, December.
    5. Banks, James & Blundell, Richard & Tanner, Sarah, 1998. "Is There a Retirement-Savings Puzzle?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 769-788, September.
    6. James Poterba & Steven Venti & David Wise, 2013. "Correction: The Composition and Drawdown of Wealth in Retirement," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(4), pages 219-222, Fall.
    7. Bennett, Paul & Peach, Richard & Peristiani, Stavros, 2001. "Structural Change in the Mortgage Market and the Propensity to Refinance," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(4), pages 955-975, November.
    8. Mastrobuoni, Giovanni, 2009. "Labor supply effects of the recent social security benefit cuts: Empirical estimates using cohort discontinuities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1224-1233, December.
    9. Irina Telyukova & Makoto Nakajima, 2010. "Home Equity Withdrawal in Retirement," 2010 Meeting Papers 636, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    10. Arna Olafsson & Michaela Pagel, 2018. "The Retirement-Consumption Puzzle: New Evidence from Personal Finances," NBER Working Papers 24405, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Fitzpatrick, Maria D. & Moore, Timothy J., 2018. "The mortality effects of retirement: Evidence from Social Security eligibility at age 62," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 121-137.
    12. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2005. "Consumption versus Expenditure," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(5), pages 919-948, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Murray, Tim & Dunn, Richard A., 2022. "Household production, home improvement, and housing investment among older Americans," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    2. David Love & Lucie Schmidt, 2015. "Comprehensive Wealth of Immigrants and Natives," Working Papers wp328, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    3. Johan Saeverud, 2025. "The Impact Of Social Security Eligibility And Pension Wealth On Retirement," CEBI working paper series 24-05, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    4. Staubli, Stefan & Lalive, Rafael & Magesan, Arvind, 2020. "The Impact of Social Security on Pension Claiming and Retirement: Active vs. Passive Decisions," CEPR Discussion Papers 15120, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Tian, Geran & Jin, Changlun & Wu, Weixing, 2024. "Too old to spend? Understanding the consumption of the elderly in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    6. Radermacher, Jan W., 2023. "Mamma Mia! Revealing hidden heterogeneity by PCA-biplot: MPC puzzle for Italy's elderly poor," SAFE Working Paper Series 382, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    7. Kitamura, Tomoki & Adachi, Yoshimi, 2024. "Retirement consumption puzzle in Japan: Insights from pension and senior worker employment policy changes," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).
    8. Esteban García-Miralles & Jonathan M. Leganza, 2024. "Public Pensions and Private Savings," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 366-405, May.
    9. Giesecke, Matthias & Jäger, Philipp, 2021. "Pension incentives and labor supply: Evidence from the introduction of universal old-age assistance in the UK," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    10. Jim Been & Susann Rohwedder & Michael Hurd, 2021. "Households’ joint consumption spending and home production responses to retirement in the US," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 959-985, December.
    11. Jäger, Philipp & Giesecke, Matthias, 2019. "Pension Incentives and Labor Force Participation: Evidence from the Introduction of Universal Old-Age Assistance in the UK," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203498, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    12. Inukai, Shinya, 2025. "The impacts of raising the public pension eligibility age on time allocation of elderly people: Evidence from Japan," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 233(C).
    13. Declan French & Donal McKillop & Tripti Sharma, 2017. "Analysis of Housing Equity Withdrawal by its Forms," CHaRMS Working Papers 17-04, Centre for HeAlth Research at the Management School (CHaRMS).
    14. Patrick Moran & Martin Orquote Connell & Cormac Orquote Dea & Francesca Parodi, 2021. "Heterogeneity in Household Spending and Well-being around Retirement," Working Papers wp427, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    15. Bairoliya, Neha & McKiernan, Kathleen, 2024. "The welfare costs of misinformation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    16. Marini, Andrea, 2024. "Updating the retirement-consumption puzzle in Italy: who are the most affected?," Working Paper Series 2936, European Central Bank.
    17. Murray, Tim, 2019. "Defined benefit pensions and homeownership in the post-Great Recession era," MPRA Paper 92601, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Olafsson, Arna & Pagel, Michaela, 2024. "Retirement puzzles: New evidence from personal finances," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    19. Aguiar, M. & Hurst, E., 2016. "The Macroeconomics of Time Allocation," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 203-253, Elsevier.
    20. Teresa Ghilarducci & Michael Papadopoulos & Anthony Webb, 2020. "The Illusory Benefits of Working Longer on Financial Preparedness for Retirement," SCEPA working paper series. 2020-02, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance

    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:pra:mprapa:125715. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.