Using home‐equity release to strengthen retirement incomes: potential and challenges

Using comprehensive administrative data on Danish retirees’ wealth, this paper documents how home‑equity holdings vary across age, income and wealth groups. We show – using simulated equity‑extraction scenarios – that accessing home equity could substantially increase retirement replacement rates throughout the socio‐economic distribution. These findings suggest that policies facilitating home‑equity extraction, such as expanded access to reverse mortgages, could meaningfully improve retirement liquidity, particularly for middle‑ and high‑income households.