Entry to homeownership among immigrants: a decomposition of factors contributing to the gap with native-born residents

摘要

This article contributes to research on the homeownership gap between immigrants and native-born residents in Western countries, extending earlier research using longitudinal data and studying a country with a short history of immigration. Discrete-time survival analysis and statistical decomposition are applied to compare the duration of entry to homeownership between non-Western immigrants and native-born residents moving to the Helsinki Metropolitan Area in Finland, using individual-level register-based data from 1990 to 2008. The results show considerable differences between groups in the speed of entry to homeownership. The majority of these differences can be explained by observed differences in economic and demographic characteristics. Therefore, differences in economic integration are an important explanation for the homeownership gaps. However, for some groups, considerable gaps remain, requiring additional explanations. From a methodological viewpoint, the results indicate that in cross-sectional analyses, the significance of economic resources as an explanation for the homeownership gaps may be underestimated.