Unemployment Risk and the Timing of Homeownership in Japan

The effect of unemployment risk on the timing of homeownership is examined through the use of a retrospective panel of Japanese households. We obtain the following results by applying the split population duration (SPD) model: (1) unemployment risk, as proxied by the probability of unemployment, has a significantly negative effect on homeownership and delays its timing, (2) the effect of unemployment risk is overestimated in previous studies, which assume that all households will eventually become homeowners, and (3) household characteristics as well as the conditions of housing and labour markets at the early stages of a household's life cycle play an important role in the determination of its housing purchase. Finally, our simulation results indicate that an initial one-year unemployment spell will have a fairly large impact of 1.6-year delay in the timing of a subsequent home purchase.