Working Paper: NBER ID: w31249
Authors: William J. Collins; Gregory Niemesh
Abstract: Income and home ownership both surged in the United States between 1940 and 1960. We use cross-place variation in changes in real income to assess the importance of income gains to the mid-century home ownership boom. OLS and IV estimates suggest that a large share of the overall increase in home ownership was attributable to wage gains that were both large on average and widely spread across workers. This research complements the literatures on how New Deal mortgage market innovations and the World War II and Korean War GI Bills promoted home ownership in this period.
Keywords: Income Gains; Home Ownership; Mid-Century Economic Changes
JEL Codes: J31; N32; N92; R21
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| demographic changes (J11) | home ownership rates (R21) |
| geographic sorting of households by income (R20) | home ownership rates (R21) |
| locality size (R12) | home ownership rates (R21) |
| regional heterogeneity (R11) | home ownership rates (R21) |
| wage gains (J31) | home ownership rates (R21) |
| income gains (E25) | home ownership rates (R21) |
| income changes (D31) | home ownership gains (R21) |