Are Home Owners Really More Unemployed?

Munch, Jakob Roland; Rosholm, Michael; Svarer, Michael

doi:10.2139/ssrn.442880

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Are Home Owners Really More Unemployed?

31 Pages Posted: 29 Sep 2003

See all articles by Jakob Roland Munch

Jakob Roland Munch

University of Copenhagen - Department of Economics; Center for Economic and Business Research (CEBR)

Michael Rosholm

Aarhus University - Department of Economics and Business Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics; Amternes og Kommunernes Forskningsinstitut (AKF)

Michael Svarer

Aarhus University - Department of Economics and Business Economics; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Date Written: September 2003

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of home-ownership on labour mobility and unemployment duration. We distinguish between finding employment locally or by being geographically mobile. We find that home ownership hampers the propensity to move for job reasons but improves the chances of finding local jobs, which is in accordance with the predictions from our theoretical model. The overall hazard rate into employment is higher for home owners, such that there is a negative correlation between home-ownership and unemployment duration. Our empirical findings thus lend some support for the main mechanism behind the so-called Oswald hypothesis, even if it does not find positive correlation between unemployment duration and home ownership at the individual level.

Keywords: Home ownership, labour mobility, unemployment duration

JEL Classification: C41, J61, J64, R23

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Munch, Jakob Roland and Rosholm, Michael and Svarer, Michael, Are Home Owners Really More Unemployed? (September 2003). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=442880 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.442880