Late starters or excluded generations? A cohort analysis of catch up in home ownership in England

Abstract

England has very volatile house prices. Using survey data spanning multiple house-price cycles over nearly forty years, we document the association between house prices and homeownership at age thirty. We then use synthetic cohort methods to assess whether differences in early ownership rates persist in later life. We find that ownership rates at age thirty have varied substantially, with a significant negative association with prices. Measurement error problems – attenuation and other biases - complicate an analysis of the persistence of these differences in ownership. We use two methods to deal with this. Both indicate that cohorts with low ownership rates at age thirty close about 80% of the ownership gap by age forty.