TY  - JOUR
AU  - Feinstein,Jonathan
AU  - McFadden,Daniel
TI  - The Dynamics of Housing Demand by the Elderly:  Wealth, Cash Flow, and Demographic Effects
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 2471
PY  - 1987
Y2  - December 1987
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2471
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2471.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jonathan Feinstein
Yale School of Management
Box 20-8200
New Haven, CT 06520-8200
Tel: 203/432-5978
Fax: 203/432-6974
E-Mail: jonathan.feinstein@yale.edu

Daniel L. McFadden
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Economics
549 Evans Hall #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: 510/643-8428
Fax: 510/642-0638
E-Mail: mcfadden@econ.berkeley.edu
M1  - published as Jonathan Feinstein, Daniel McFadden. "The Dynamics of Housing Demand by the Elderly: Wealth, Cash Flow, and Demographic Effects," in David A. Wise, editor, "The Economics of Aging" University of Chicago Press (1989)

M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1988-12-01
AB  - Using Waves one through fifteen of the PSID data set, we investigate the pattern of housing mobility amongst the elderly. We focus especially on two issues: (1) Determining which household characteristics tend to increase the probability of a move; and (2) Whether elderly households systematically move to smaller, less expensive dwellings when they do move, and, if so, which characteristics make such "downsizing" particularly likely. We find that wealthier households are less likely to move and to downsize, and that changes in family composition or retirement status significantly increase the likelihood of a move. We do not find much evidence of imperfections in the housing market, or of pervasive liquidity constraints. Finally, we develop a Lagrange Multiplier test for unobserved heterogeneity amongst elderly households, and strongly reject the null hypothesis of homogeneity.
ER  -