Home-ownership as a social norm and positional good: Subjective wellbeing evidence from panel data

Much attention has been devoted to examining the absolute benefits of home-ownership (e.g. security and autonomy). This paper, by contrast, is concerned with conceptualising and testing the relative benefits of home-ownership; those benefits that depend on an individual’s status in society. Home-ownership has previously been analysed as a social norm, implying that the relative benefits (costs) associated with being an owner (renter) are positively related to relevant others’ home-ownership values. The theoretical contribution of this paper is to additionally conceptualise home-ownership as a positional good, implying that the status of both home-owners and renters is negatively related to relevant others’ home-ownership consumption. The empirical contribution of this paper is to quantitatively test for these relative benefits in terms of subjective wellbeing. We run fixed effects regressions on three waves of the British Household Panel Study. We find that (1) a strengthening of relevant others’ home-ownership values is associated with increases (decreases) in the subjective wellbeing of home-owners (renters), and (2) an increase in relevant others’ home-ownership consumption decreases the life satisfaction of owners but has no effect for renters. Overall our findings suggest that (1) the relative benefits of home-ownership are both statistically significant and of a meaningful magnitude, and (2) home-ownership is likely to be both a social norm and a positional good. Without explicitly recognising these relative benefits, policymakers risk overestimating the contribution of home-ownership to societal wellbeing. 很多研究者注重考察住房所有权的绝对好处（例如安全和自治）。相比之下，本文关注理解和测试住房所有权的相对收益；这些收益取决于个人的社会地位。先前的分析将住房所有权视为一种社会规范，这意味着所有者（租赁者）的相对收益（成本）与相关其他人的住房所有权价值正相关。本文的理论贡献是将住房所有权别样地理解为一种地位优势，意味着房屋所有者和租房者的地位与相关其他人的住房所有权消费是负相关的。本文的实证贡献是从主观幸福感的角度定量测试这些相对收益。我们对三波英国家庭小组研究执行了固定效应回归分析。分析发现：（1）相关其他人的住房所有权价值的增强与房屋所有者（租赁者）的主观幸福感增加（减少）相关，以及（2）相关其他人的住房所有权消费增加减少了业主的生活满意度，但对租房者没有影响。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明：（1）住房所有权的相对收益既具有统计学显著意义，而且规模相当大；（2）住房所有权可能既是一种社会规范又是一种地位优势。在没有明确承认这些相对利益的情况下，政策制定者有可能高估住房所有权对社会福祉的贡献。