Housing decisions of young Swedish adults

Pooled and longitudinal data for the years 1989 and 1992 were used to study the housing decisions of young Swedish adults before and after the 1991 Swedish tax reform. Although the household formation and tenure choice decisions of young adults were found to be simultaneously determined, neglecting the cross-equation correlation between these two decisions had no major impact on the estimated coefficients. Demographic factors were found to significantly affect both the household formation and tenure choice decisions. Economic factors were also found to significantly affect young adults' choice of tenure mode. This is however not the case regarding the household formation decision, Young adults' decision whether to form a household was found to be rather insensitive to economic factors. Furthermore, the impact of the relative cost of owned to rented housing was found to be significantly lower after the 1991 Swedish tax reform. One possible explanation might be the smaller variation in relative cost of owned versus rented housing between households after the 1991 Swedish tax reform. Finally, neglecting household-specific heterogeneity in the tenure choice estimation causes a downward bias in the parameter estimates. (C) 1999 Academic Press.