Do house price increases negatively affect fertility intentions and fertility?

New paper by Ang Li (and co-authors Kadir Atalay & Stephen Whelan from the University of Sydney) looks at the effect of house price increases on renters and homeowners fertility intentions and fertility outcomes in Australia. Housing affordability has been a big issue in Australia for some time and the impact of decreasing affordability has been linked to declining fertility rates. Atalay, Li and Whelan using data from the HILDA survey find that increasing house prices have different effects for homeowners and renters. Here is the abstract:

There is increasing evidence that housing and housing markets impact a variety of behaviors and outcomes. Using a rich panel of Australian microlevel data, we estimated the effect of housing price changes on both fertility intentions and fertility outcomes. The analysis indicates that the likelihood of having a child among homeowners is positively related to an increase in housing wealth. The positive housing wealth effect has the greatest impact on the fertility and fertility intentions of Australian homeowners who are young and mortgage holders. In comparison, there is evidence that increases in housing prices decrease the fertility intentions of private renters with children.

The full paper can be viewed here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhe.2021.101787

This paper is based on a chapter of Ang Li's PhD thesis which can be found here: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/18877

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