Heterogeneity in Asian American Home-ownership: The Impact of Household Endowments and Immigrant Status

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Abstract
Recently, research has begun to investigate the reasons for differences in homeownership rates between Asians and Whites. This paper extends this research by examining the heterogeneity that exists across Asian groups in the US. We find that there are important differences across geographical area, across time and across groups in the importance of various factors that influence the likelihood of owning a home. After controlling for household mobility and other socioeconomic characteristics, we find that most Asian groups have home-ownership rates similar to those of Whites, but that Chinese households have home-ownership rates 20 percentage points higher than their household characteristics would predict. In part, this may be due to differences in support unmeasured in the data, but future research is needed to fully understand the source of this differential.