Social Attachment and House Prices as Determinants of Mobility Among the Elderly in the US: An Empirical Study Using Longitudinal Data

Author

Wilder R. Pimentel, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

5-1-2023

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Economics

First Advisor

Lahiri, Sajal

Abstract

The rapid growth of the older population in the United States has led to a considerable upsurge in the housing market. This marks a pivotal moment for assessing the affordability and availability of housing, as well as the demand for housing based on geographical locations. These factors will be of paramount importance for the aging population in the future. The first part of the study will focus on analyzing the effect of house and area prices on residential mobility, as well as to explore differences in this effect among younger and older elderly individuals. We find that elderly individuals are more likely to move when the destination home is relatively more expensive than their current home, which contradicts the life-cycle housing consumption hypothesis of capital expenditure in old age. In the second part, we focus on the impact of social attachment and mobility for within-state and out-of-state. The results show that individuals prefer to move within-state to outside, the more attached they are to an area. The results have differences among race and education. In the third part, we focus on the effect of social connections with distance traveled conditional on mobility. The results suggest that individuals are willing to travel farther distances, the more attached they are to a location.