Do high levels of home-ownership create unemployment? Introducing the missing link between housing tenure and unemployment. Issue 4 (19th May 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Borg, Ida; Brandén, Maria
• Is Part Of: Housing studies. Volume 33:Issue 4(2018)
• Page Start: 501
• Page End: 524
• Publication Date: 2018-05-19
• Subjects: Home-ownership -- unemployment -- regional labour market -- job matching -- mobility -- Sweden -- register data; Housing -- Periodicals; 307.336
• DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2017.1358808
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0267-3037

Abstract

Abstract: A large number of studies have demonstrated that the proportion of home-owners in a region tend to be positively associated with the unemployment levels in that region. In this paper, we introduce a missing piece of explaining this commonly found pattern. By analysing individual-level population register data on Sweden, we jointly examine the effects of micro- and macro-level home-ownership on individuals' unemployment. The findings indicate that even though home-owners have a lower probability of being unemployed, there is a penalty for both renters and home-owners on unemployment in regions with high home-ownership rates. Differences in mobility patterns cannot explain this pattern. However, when labour market size is considered, the higher probability of unemployment in high home-owning regions is drastically reduced. This suggests that high home-ownership regions tend to coincide with small labour markets, affecting the job matching process negatively.