A household-level decomposition of the white–black homeownership gap
View/ Open
Publisher version (Check access options)
Check access options
Date
2011-06Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper uses a semiparametric homeownership model to estimate and to decompose the household-level
white–black homeownership gap into an endowment component and a residual component across the
distribution of homeownership rates. We find that the racial gap differs across homeownership rates and that
studies that examine the gap only at the mean may be misleading. We also find that although household
characteristics explain the homeownership gap for most households, there is a substantial portion of the gap
that remains unexplained for households with a very low propensity to own homes. A comparison of the
estimates from the semiparametric model and a probit model suggests that the semiparametric approach is
able to capture the heterogeneity structure between the ethnic groups, particularly in the tails of the
distribution. To illustrate the flexibility of our household-level approach, we decompose the homeownership
gap in cities of varying levels of segregation.
Collections
- Social & Economic Survey Research Institute Research [279 items ]