Household Demand for Residential Housing Attributes: A Crosstabular Analysis of Homeowners with the National Sample of the Annual Housing Survey

摘要

This study provides a broader and simpler approach for examining household locational decisions. Data are derived from the Annual Housing Survey (AHS), 1974 through 1977. Crosstabulations are constructed between different household types and individual housing unit attributes. While this approach does not address explicitly interactions among housing unit attributes in determining locational choice, it does provide a more general understanding of the types of locational outcomes created by these interactions. In addition, this approach more easily allows analysis of neighborhood attributes such as presence of crime, rundown housing, inadequate shopping facilities, and bad schools that are based on subjective household responses on the AHS. The analyses of the demand for housing attributes are based on the following comparisons: white traditional and nonwhite traditional households, white traditional and white contemporary households, white mobile and all white households, life cycle categories among white traditional households for moderate to high income households, and low - income and moderate - income to high - income white households. Results indicate that while nonwhite households are more likely to reside in older, less valuable housing units in central cities in relation to white households, nonwhite households do consume comparable levels of housing unit size. Higher income households reside in larger and newer housing units, reflecting the positive income elasticity of housing. Neighborhood measures, however, do not vary based on income, suggesting that subjective neighborhood measures do not assess actual neighborhood quality very well. Households without children reside in smaller and older housing units in the central cities in comparison to households with children. Life cycle effects illustrate how housing demand increases as young households grow older, followed later in life by housing demand declines. The results are significant because the locational choices of different households influence the conditions of urban neighborhoods and the nature of housing investment in a metropolitan area. Tabular data and six references are provided.