Do the elderly reduce housing equity? An international comparison

We explore the pattern of elderly homeownership using 60 microeconomic surveys on about 300,000 individuals residing in 15 OECD countries. In all countries, the survey is repeated over time, permitting construction of an international dataset of repeated cross-sectional data. We find that ownership rates decline considerably after age 60. However, a large part of the decline depends on cohort effects. Adjusting for them, we find that ownership rates start falling after age 70 and reach a percentage point per year decline after age 75. We find that differences across country ownership trajectories are correlated with indicators measuring market regulation degree.