Over the last three decades, the growth in housing costs relative to household incomes across cities in the United States has dramatically affected households' housing options. For this study, we apply a logit model to data from the American Housing Survey to provide evidence on how rising house costs affect female-headed households' decisions to move from the current home to another. Estimates reveal that total housing cost is a significant determinant of a female-headed household’s decision to move. We also found that lower-income female-headed households are more likely to move to a new location than higher-income female-headed households. These results support the idea that affordable housing programs should be maintained and expanded to offer some alleviation to the burden of rising housing costs on lower-income female-headed households and other vulnerable groups
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Measuring subjective housing affordability using a data-driven discrete information approach: A case study of Selangor, Malaysia
A widely adopted measure of housing affordability is that households should spend no more than 30% of their household income on housing. However, this normative threshold is an arbitrary Great Depression-era guideline and may not be relevant today. This paper proposes a subjective indicator of housing affordability by introducing a method commonly used in the medical sciences. It utilizes discrete information to estimate a subjective affordability ratio that discriminates between subjective house-poor and non-house-poor households. We apply the proposed method to household-level data collected in Selangor, Malaysia, and show that the optimal cut-off point is 23.5%. This estimated value suggests a higher prevalence of house-poor households than is implied by the regularly assumed 30% threshold. In addition, we perform a sensitivity analysis and find the bias in the estimated cut-off point is close to zero.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1921523
- PAR ID:
- 10477485
- Editor(s):
- Taylor, Mark P.
- Publisher / Repository:
- Routledge
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Applied Economics Letters
- Edition / Version:
- 1.0
- Volume:
- 0
- Issue:
- 0
- ISSN:
- 1350-4851
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1-5
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Subjective housing affordability Youden index Optimal cutpoint Malaysia
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: 958.1KB Other: pdf
- Size(s):
- 958.1KB
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2023.2208833
