Publication type
Research Paper
Author
Publication date
April 8, 2022
Summary:
This paper adds nuance to two seemingly contradictory findings in the literature: on the one hand, the detection of a relationship between housing tenure and mental health in cross-sectional data, while an absence thereof in longitudinal studies. Using recent advances in the difference-in-differences literature with staggered adoption and employing the combined British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society datasets, I characterise the dynamic relationship between the transition to mortgaged and then outright homeownership and mental health. Framing the transition to homeownership as an event study with dynamic effects, instead of looking at its relationship with mental health only in the immediate neighbourhood of the tenure change, reveals long term dynamics of mental health with respect to the tenure decision. While the transition from renting to mortgaged homeownership involves no change or possibly a worsening in reported mental health, the transition to outright homeownership is associated to improvements in reported mental health that increase in magnitude over time. I also test the heterogeneity of these results across Loan-to-Value ratios.
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4078586
Subjects
#547310