Acquisition capital: using a new concept to explore housing outcomes among millennials in the United States

Figures & data

Table 1. Dependent and independent variables.

Independent variables
Variable name	Original question (abbreviated or summarized)	Variable rescaling/definition
Tenure	Homeownership class	1= Own; 0= Do not own
Gross housing wealth	Value of the primary home + other residential real estate	Logged for regressions to account for positive skew
Commonly used resources in housing studies (household and family resources)
Household income	Household income in the previous calendar year.	Top-coded at 10x the median and then converted to 1000s of dollars
Household educational attainment	What is the highest education level of the respondent and spouse (where applicable)?	1 = Less than a high school diploma; 2= High school diploma; 3 = Associates degree or some college; 4 = 4-year bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) or higher
Student loans	Do you (and your family here) owe any money or have any student loans for educational expenses?	0 = Yes; 1 = No
Received inheritance	Did you receive an inheritance?	1 = Yes, received an inheritance; 0 = No, did not receive an inheritance
Expect inheritance	Do you expect to receive an inheritance?	1 = Yes, expect to receive an inheritance; 0 = No, do not expect to receive an inheritance
Parents’ educational attainment	What is the highest education level of you/your spouse/partner’s mother? Father?	1 = Less than a high school diploma; 2= High school diploma; 3 = Associates degree or some college; 4 = 4-year bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) or higher
Additional resources (financial strategies)
Spending/savings habits	Do you spend less, the same, or more than you earn?	1 = Spend more than income; 2 = Spend the same as income; 3 = Spend less than income
Credit card payoff habits	Do you pay off your credit cards every month in full?	1 = No credit card (cc) to pay off; 2 = Hardly ever pay off cc; 3 = Sometimes pay off cc; 4= Always or almost always pay off cc
Information - borrowing/credit	Where do you get your information about borrowing or credit? (multiple options can be selected)	A combination of the first two behaviours selected: 1 = Never borrow or never save/invest + all other choices; 2 = Indirect or passive resources (advertisements) + all other choices except professional advice; 3 = Direct network or yourself + all other choices except professional advice; 4= Indirect or passive resources or direct network/yourself + professional advice; 5 = professional advice + all other choices
Information - saving/investing	Where do you get your information about saving and investing? (multiple options can be selected)
Financial knowledge	On a scale from zero to ten where zero is not at all knowledgeable about personal finances and ten is very knowledgeable about personal finances, what number would you (and your (husband/wife/partner) be on the scale?	For all three measures, a −1 (zero value in SCF) was combined with a score of 1 to create a scale from 1–10; scale was then collapsed from 1–5 when used as a factor variable in regressions
Financial risk taking	On a scale from zero to ten, where zero is not at all willing to take risks and ten is very willing to take risks, what number would you (and your husband/wife/partner) be on the scale?
Searching for credit terms	On a scale from zero to ten, where zero is no searching and ten is a great deal of searching, what number would you (and your husband/wife/partner) be on the scale?

Source: Authors’ definitions based on original variables derived from the 2019 SCF data.

Note: See the online supplemental appendix for more information about question wording, original data categories, and data transformation details.

Table 2. Logistic and Heckman regressions predicting housing outcomes among millennial households.

	Homeownership (Logistic Regressions)				Gross housing wealth (Heckman Regressions)
	M1: Standard resources		M2: All 13 resources		M1: Standard resources		M2: All 13 resources
Acquisition capital variables	Odds ratio	SE	Odds ratio	SE	Exp. coeff.	SE	Exp coeff.	SE
Household income ($1000s top-coded)	1.008***	(0.001)	1.005***	(0.001)	1.003***	(0.000)	1.003***	(0.000)
Household education (ref = Some coll./assoc. deg.)
Less than a HS education	0.650^^	(0.157)	1.036	(0.297)	0.868	(0.134)	0.900	(0.144)
High school diploma	0.782^^	(0.108)	0.953	(0.145)	1.037	(0.092)	1.068	(0.099)
Bachelor’s degree or higher	1.601***	(0.168)	1.417**	(0.171)	1.561***	(0.096)	1.539***	(0.101)
Student loans (ref = Has loans)	1.249*	(0.127)	1.312*	(0.151)	1.133**	(0.050)	1.159**	(0.059)
Received inheritance (ref = No inheritance)	3.548***	(0.505)	3.772***	(0.610)	0.883^^	(0.062)	0.903	(0.069)
Expect inheritance (ref = Do not expect)	0.941	(0.100)	0.817^^	(0.093)	1.137**	(0.047)	1.103*	(0.049)
Education level of parents (ref = Some coll./assoc. deg.)
Less than a HS education	0.868	(0.187)	0.903	(0.209)			1.088	(0.160)
High school diploma	0.938	(0.149)	0.994	(0.159)			0.814**	(0.062)
Bachelor’s degree or higher	0.939	(0.134)	1.014	(0.157)			1.024	(0.058)
Spending habits (ref = Spend same as income)
Spend more than income			1.063	(0.163)			1.158*	(0.086)
Spend less than income			1.716***	(0.202)			0.910	(0.062)
Credit card payoff habits (ref = Sometimes pay off credit card)
No credit card to pay off			0.423***	(0.071)			0.730*	(0.104)
Hardly ever pay off credit cards			1.709***	(0.260)			0.871*	(0.053)
Always or almost always pay off credit card			1.087	(0.139)			0.961	(0.050)
Receipt of borrowing/credit info (ref = Advertisements + all other (no professional advice))
Never borrow + all other (no professional advice)			0.917	(0.252)			1.258	(0.205)
Personal network + all other (no professional advice)			0.716**	(0.088)			0.996	(0.055)
Network/advertisements + professional advice			1.007	(0.147)			0.869*	(0.054)
Professional advice + all other			1.177	(0.172)			1.011	(0.061)
Receipt of saving/investing info (ref = Advertisements + all other (no professional advice))
Never save + other (no professional advice)			0.665^	(0.149)			0.705*	(0.100)
Personal network + all other (no professional advice)			2.153***	(0.435)			0.804*	(0.082)
Network/advertisements + professional advice			1.330^^	(0.195)			1.006	(0.054)
Professional advice + all other			1.710***	(0.252)			0.883*	(0.048)
Personal financial knowledge (ref = Med. finan. knowledge)
Low financial knowledge			1.871^^	(0.636)			0.623*	(0.130)
Low-medium financial knowledge			1.059	(0.248)			0.976	(0.128)
Medium-high financial knowledge			1.478**	(0.187)			0.989	(0.055)
High financial knowledge			1.359*	(0.192)			1.014	(0.063)
Do you take financial risks (ref = Sometimes willing)
Not at all willing			0.646**	(0.094)			1.143^^	(0.080)
Rarely willing			0.645***	(0.076)			0.988	(0.063)
Often willing			0.786^^	(0.113)			1.165***	(0.053)
Very willing			0.379***	(0.080)			1.147	(0.113)
Do you search for best credit terms (ref = Some searching)
No searching			0.886	(0.143)			0.879	(0.091)
A little bit of searching			1.058	(0.195)			0.880	(0.095)
A good deal of searching			1.021	(0.146)			1.019	(0.066)
A great deal of searching			1.042	(0.145)			1.003	(0.065)
Socio-demographic controls
Employment status (ref = Not employed)	1.752*	(0.385)	1.373	(0.308)
Partner status (ref = Not coupled)	1.946***	(0.218)	2.052***	(0.258)	0.968	(0.085)	0.997	(0.094)
Presence of children in household (ref = No children)	1.938***	(0.181)	2.115***	(0.208)	0.913	(0.053)	0.936	(0.056)
Age of the respondent	1.289**	(0.109)	1.310**	(0.123)	1.102	(0.067)	1.085	(0.068)
Age squared of the respondent	0.997*	(0.001)	0.997*	(0.001)	0.999^^	(0.001)	0.999	(0.001)
Sex of the respondent (ref = Female)	1.219*	(0.100)	1.157	(0.108)	0.995	(0.038)	0.974	(0.041)
Race/ethnicity of the respondent (ref = White)
Black/African American/Non-Hispanic	0.458***	(0.050)	0.542***	(0.069)	1.309**	(0.127)	1.162^^	(0.104)
Hispanic/Latino	0.474***	(0.068)	0.451***	(0.073)	1.529***	(0.137)	1.483***	(0.138)
Other races	0.495***	(0.067)	0.503***	(0.072)	1.203*	(0.107)	1.199*	(0.105)
Selection variables for Heckman models
First primary residence (ref = Yes)					1.236***	(0.052)	1.207***	(0.054)
Other res. real estate (ref = No other res. real estate)					1.521***	(0.070)	1.532***	(0.079)
Inverse Mills					0.608*	(0.125)	0.652^^	(0.149)
N	1520		1520		723		723

^p < 0.10, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

Note: Regressions and reference groups were modelled after Martinez & Aja (2021) and Gibson-Davis & Percheski (2018). Odds ratios are presented for logistic regressions; exponentiated coefficients are presented for the Heckman outcome linear regressions. Standard errors in parentheses. Probit selection models are provided in Appendix Table 1 in the supplementary material. Employment status is the exclusion restriction for the Heckman models; the IMRs in the linear models above were calculated from these selection models.

Figure 1. Predicted values of homeownership likelihood for households at two income percentiles. Notes: *Comparison scenario is scenario 1. For households at the median, significant differences are shown comparing scenarios 2–5 to scenario 1. For households at ninetieth percentile, signficant differences are shown comparing scenario 5 to scenario 1.

Figure 2. Predicted gross housing wealth for households at two income percentiles. Notes: *Comparison scenario is scenario 1. For households at the median and ninetieth percentiles, significant differences are shown comparing scenario 4 to scenario 1.

Martinez, B. & Aja, A. (2021) How race counts for latinx homeownership, Critical Sociology, 47, pp. 993–1011.

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Gibson-Davis, C. M. & Percheski, C. (2018) Children and the elderly: Wealth inequality among america’s dependents, Demography, 55, pp. 1009–1032.

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