This paper was presented at the conference "Unequal incomes, unequal outcomes? Economic inequality and measures of well-being" as part of session 2, " Affordability of housing for young and poor families." The conference was held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on May 7, 1999. The authors report that the cost of good housing has risen for low-income individuals. The National Association of Realtors affordability index shows that affordability conditions are better today than at any time in the past twenty-five years. However, Gyourko and Tracy's analysis suggests that this finding may not hold for low-skilled workers at the bottom of the income distribution. The real incomes of these households have not fully recovered to the levels reached before the 1990-91 recession, yet the constant-quality price of the housing bundle they typically consume has continued to rise in the 1990s. Therefore, to afford a single-family home, these households must be increasing the number of hours worked or shifting down to lower quality housing.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Article provided by Federal Reserve Bank of New York in its journal Economic Policy Review.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)