Alternative Approaches to the Family Life Cycle in the Analysis of Housing Consumption

Abstract

The use of well-defined family life-cycle typologies, while the rule in marketing and sociology, is not common in the analysis of housing consumption in the economics literature. Proxy variables such as age of the household head and marital status are typically substituted for the more detailed typologies. Using loan-approval data, this paper analyses the effects of life-cycle stage on housing consumption. The detailed typologies are found not to be generally superior to the more simplified approaches, except in the case of per capita consumption. For per capita consumption, price, and quality, clear evidence is found for structural nonhomogeneity across life-cycle stages.