Home-ownership as a social norm and positional good: Subjective wellbeing evidence from panel data
Tóm tắt
Much attention has been devoted to examining the absolute benefits of home-ownership (e.g. security and autonomy). This paper, by contrast, is concerned with conceptualising and testing the relative benefits of home-ownership; those benefits that depend on an individual’s status in society. Home-ownership has previously been analysed as a social norm, implying that the relative benefits (costs) associated with being an owner (renter) are positively related to relevant others’ home-ownership values. The theoretical contribution of this paper is to additionally conceptualise home-ownership as a positional good, implying that the status of both home-owners and renters is negatively related to relevant others’ home-ownership consumption.
The empirical contribution of this paper is to quantitatively test for these relative benefits in terms of subjective wellbeing. We run fixed effects regressions on three waves of the British Household Panel Study. We find that (1) a strengthening of relevant others’ home-ownership values is associated with increases (decreases) in the subjective wellbeing of home-owners (renters), and (2) an increase in relevant others’ home-ownership consumption decreases the life satisfaction of owners but has no effect for renters. Overall our findings suggest that (1) the relative benefits of home-ownership are both statistically significant and of a meaningful magnitude, and (2) home-ownership is likely to be both a social norm and a positional good. Without explicitly recognising these relative benefits, policymakers risk overestimating the contribution of home-ownership to societal wellbeing.
Từ khóa
Tài liệu tham khảo
Buchholz TG, 2002, Safe at Home: The New Role of Housing in the US Economy
Duesenberry JS, 1949, Income, saving, and the theory of consumer behavior
Frank RH, 1985, The American Economic Review, 75, 101
Frank RH (2007) Falling Behind: How Income Inequality Harms the Middle Class. Thesis, University of California Press.
Haisken-DeNew JP, 2010, Journal of Applied Social Science Studies, 130, 643
Harkness J, 2003, Economic Policy Review, 9, 1
Hechter M, 2001, Social Norms
Hirsch F, 2005, Social Limits to Growth
Homans GC, 1974, Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms
Marcuse P, 1975, Journal of Society and Social Welfare, 3, 181
Murie A, 1998, Housing and Public Policy: Citizenship, Choice and Control, 79
Saunders P, 1990, A Nation of Home Owners
Veblen T, 1899, The Theory of the Leisure Class
Wilkinson R, 2009, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger