Propriété immobilière et déqualifications dans l'emploi

Abstract

Homeownership and Job Downgrading. Our empirical study stems from previous research on the effects of residential status on microeconomic labour market outcomes. It focuses on employees and assesses the a priori ambiguous impact of homeownership on job-downgrading. On the one hand, homeownership might reduce the set of employment opportunities, and thus increase job-downgrading ; on the other hand, homeowners might benefit from extended social networks and from professional stability, and thus reduce their downgrading risk. We use the French data set of the 1995-2001 European Community Household Panel to build botha statistical measure as well as a subjective measure of wage downgrading. We estimate a recursive bivariate probit that simultaneously models the residential status choice and the probability to be in a downgraded job. Our results show that other thing being equal, homeowners are more wage downgraded and feel more overeducated than renters. Consequently, homeownership could be a source of mismatch between workers and jobs on the French labour market.