Intended Bequests and Housing Equity in Older Age

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This paper examines how homeownership evolves in old age and around the time of death, using detailed data from the Health and Retirement Study to assess the extent to which housing wealth held by older Americans might be used to complement Social Security in the provision of retirement income. Critical components of the analysis include the use of rich information on medical diagnoses, functional status, and bequest intentions in a competing-risks proportional hazard model of the likelihood of making a tenure transition out of homeownership, where death is the competing risk.

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