The effects of two major demographic forces are traced between 1950 and 2040: the formation and aging of the baby boom generation and the reduction and subsequent return of large-scale immigration. These forces combine to mark several major turning points essential for understanding the changing urban condition. These include the depopulation of “gray areas” that spurred urban renewal in the 1950s, the gentrification initiated in the 1970s, and the collapse of apartment construction in the 1990s followed by its recovery in the 2000s. Looking forward, the authors address the substantial impact of settled immigrants who are now upwardly mobile. Finally, the authors consider the impacts of the sell-off of housing by the aging of the massive baby boom generation that is anticipated to take place beginning in 2020 and discuss whether the expected housing glut can be absorbed by a relatively smaller and less advantaged younger generation in the 2040s.
Homeownership is a topic of widespread policy concern, and the 1990 census provides a unique opportunity to review trends of the 1980s for subareas of the nation and subgroups of the population. This paper addresses three main questions. First, in which states did the overall level of homeownership fare best during the 1980s, and in which did the level decline most? Second, did the level of homeownership fall where house values rose most steeply? Finally, in which states did the large baby-boom generation fare best, and in which did the largest generation gap open between the baby-boom generation and the elderly?In the nation, the downward trend in ownership was slight, marking the first decline since the 1930s. Declines under age 45 were much greater-6 percentage points-while elderly persons experienced a gain in homeownership of about 5 percentage points. For young people, homeownership fell the most in states where house values also declined.
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Christopher M. Otrok Federal Reserve Bank of RichmondThe Maze of Urban Housing Markets.In this book a theoretical and empirical framework for analyzing the diversity of urban housing markets is presented. The housing market is, according to the authors, characterized by "segmentation" by both demanders and suppliers. This segmentation is a consequence of the unique features of housing, which include spatial immobility, durability, heterogeneity, and modifiability. An implication of spatial immobility (and durability) is that demanders of housing services (in particular, owner occupied) will make choices based on an array of public and private services associated with the fixed location. These patterns of demand, which will vary for a given individual with life cycle, economic, and other circumstances, produce a complex "quality-service" segmentation. The urban housing market is thus characterized as an aggregation of noncompeting submarkets. Demanders of the services provided by a given submarket are relatively unresponsive to market and price adjustments in other noncompeting submarkets. The result is highly inelastic demand for a given segment. Substitutability is further reduced by the high cost of adjustments to housing consumption and investment. In addition to its intuitive appeal, this view of...
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