Housing equity and household consumption in retirement: Evidence from the Singapore Life Panel

• Main Authors: CHEN, Lipeng, JIANG, Liang, PHANG, Sock Yong, YU, Jun
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: Housing Wealth; Elderly Households; Monetization; Singapore; Asian Studies; Economics; Gerontology; Real Estate
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2264; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/3263/viewcontent/Draft_16_.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

We utilize data from the Singapore Life Panel© survey to empirically investigate the impact of housing equity on consumption of elderly households. Based on panel analysis, we find housing equity value has no significant impact on non-durable consumption for elderly people. The conclusion holds for a battery of robustness check. Moreover, heterogeneity analyses based on subsamples by age of household head, house type, and number of property possessed also show no significant impact of housing equity on consumption in general. Finally, we use scenario analysis to study the Lease Buyback Scheme (LBS), a novel housing equity monetization scheme which allows elderly households to unlock housing equity for retirement financing. We find LBS increases non-durable consumption by about only 0.69%, which may explain the low take-up rate for the LBS.