The Demand for Housing in Britain and Population Ageing: Microeconometric Evidence

This paper estimates a household's demand function for housing using household data. Estimates of the price and (current) income elasticities are robust at about -0.4 and 0.5 respectively. Independent of price and income effects, there is a strong age pattern to household demand. In conjunction with the age profile of household formation, this pattern implies that changes in the age distribution of the population have important effects on aggregate housing demand, although economic growth dominates in determining its rate of growth.