Migration and home ownership

Abstract

It is well known that home ownership has an impeding effect on migration. However, the strong increase in home ownership in the Netherlands since the Second World War has not led to a decrease in migration. In this paper three factors are identified which may counterbalance the expected negative effect of increasing home ownership on migration. First, the composition of the population of homeowners has changed towards younger, more mobile households. Second, home ownership has become more common, possibly leading to greater dynamics within the owner-occupied segment of the housing market. And third, macro factors such as economic growth may have led to more migration. Using the Housing Demand Surveys and logistic regression analysis, we investigated to what extent the effect of home ownership on migration changed in the Netherlands during the 1980s and 1990s. We find - contrary to what we expected - that during the research period the negative effect of home ownership on migration seems to have strengthened somewhat. Within the research period, however, this negative effect was compensated by a general rise in migration for both owning and renting households, possibly attributable to macro factors affecting migration, such as economic growth and changes in the housing market.