>>Quite frankly, I asked the question because I was
>>under the impression that home
>>ownership was at much lower levels. Now I find
>>out it's been reasonably close to 2/3
>>of the population for 30 years now!
>>
>>How can that be, given the rising cost of buying a
>>home and the stagnant state of real
>>income for most people? Or am I mistaken about
>>that too?
Brad answered :
>Stagnant real *wages* for males (if you believe that the CPI is an accurate
>measure of inflation (which I have begun thinking it is not, or rather,
>that for the poor the CPI is pretty accurate and for the rest it is no)).
>Conditional on your having two adults in the household, however, family
>incomes have risen a bunch with increasing female labor force participation.
>
>How much, if any, of this increase in *incomes* is an increase in *material
>welfare* is a hard question. But it does mean that households have more
>cash income with which to pay their mortgages.
I'm not sure, but I believe that home ownership is function of demographics too. At least part of the US phenomenon could be explained(statistically)by the "exodus" from big cities. Am I wrong ?
Alessandro
Alessandro Coricelli tel(203)457-2065 fax (203)457-0508