Homeownership, the Great Recession, and Wealth: Evidence From the Survey of Consumer Finances

Abstract

The owned home is central to both the American Dream and the financial lives of U.S. households. This article explores the typical financial trajectories of homeowners during the Great Recession, assessing the viability of positioning home equity at the core of a household's balance sheet. Using the 2007–2009 reinterview panel of the Survey of Consumer Finances, we describe the diverse balance sheets of groups of homeowning households. While some homeowners lost equity and wealth in the Great Recession, we find that an owned home introduced severe risk of loss, but homeowners were less likely than renters to lose very large proportions of their wealth. The experience of homeowners' balance sheets during the downturn was diverse, and the typical experiences of different groups are compared and contrasted.

Keywords::

• Great Recession
• homeownership
• net worth
• Survey of Consumer Finances
• wealth

Notes

^1. Key's work on this article was conducted prior to joining the Pew Charitable Trusts. The conclusions and findings presented here may not reflect the positions of the Pew Charitable Trusts or its Board.

^2. Information on the weights used can be found on the SCF website (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 2014).

^3. The preponderance of cases near zero and the long tails of the distribution made the histogram less than illuminating under the specifications attempted. Kernel density plots capture similar underlying information but offer a clearer graphical representation of the underlying pattern in the data.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Michal Grinstein-Weiss is an associate professor at the Brown School and is the associate director of the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis. She also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, as a research associate for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and as a fellow for the UNC Center for Community Capital. Grinstein-Weiss is a leading expert and researcher in the asset-building field and is an influential voice in the design of innovative savings policies. She received her PhD in social work from Washington University in St. Louis.

Clinton Key

Clinton Key is a research officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts' Safe Checking in the Electronic Age Project. The research included in this article was conducted while he was a research manager at the University of North Carolina School of Social Work and the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis. Key's training is in sociology. He holds degrees from the University of North Carolina and the University of Chicago and resides in Washington, DC.

Shannon Carrillo

Shannon Carrillo is a graduate research assistant for the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis. She is currently a master's candidate in public health at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. She holds a bachelor's degree in social work from the University of Iowa.