Housing has important consequences for the social and economic well-being of children, their families, and their communities in the United States. For example, families that are """"""""cost-burdened"""""""" due to high shelter costs are less able to save resources to offset unanticipated health and other emergencies, plan for retirement, or invest in education. However, housing situations such as cost burden, homeownership rates, and the value and equity of owned homes vary dramatically by race, ethnicity, and nativity in the United States. In general, compared with White households, African American and Latino households are disadvantaged in these outcomes;immigrant households are similarly disadvantaged compared with U.S. born households. The current project aims to understand more about how race, ethnicity, and nativity are linked to homeownership and lesser-studied housing outcomes.
The first aim i s to estimate the direct connection between race and ethnicity and the four different facets of housing for Latinos, Non-Hispanic Whites, and African Americans. In addition, analyses of Latinos will consider the role of generational status (immigrant born in another country and the U.S. born children of immigrants).
The second aim i s to examine variations in housing cost burden, homeownership, home values and home equity between Latino immigrants and native- born Latinos, Non-Hispanic Whites, and Blacks using lesser-studied or """"""""new"""""""" variables such as having a U.S. bank account, legal status, and attachments to the home country. The project employs detailed data about individuals, households, and neighborhoods collected and assembled as part of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS). The first wave of L.A.FANS data was collected between 2000 and January 2002 from approximately 3,000 households in 65 census tracts in Los Angeles County. Respondent data are linked with quantitative information about neighborhoods from the 2000 census. The primary dependent variables of interest are housing cost burden (the proportion of household income spent on rent or mortgage), whether the household is buying or renting the home, value of owner-occupied home, and the equity on the home (the difference between the value of the home and the principal owed on the home mortgage(s)). The housing outcomes require different statistical techniques: logit regression for homeownership, OLS regression for cost burden, Tobit regression for home value and equity. Overall, the results of the project will provide new insights about how race, ethnicity, and nativity shape opportunities for economic mobility in the United States. This project is the foundation for longitudinal studies of cost burden, tenure, and housing wealth using the next wave of L.A. FANS (2006- 2008).
The proposed project employs data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS) to examine differences by race and ethnicity in housing costs, homeownership rates, housing values and home equity for Latinos, Non-Hispanic Whites, and African Americans. The study will also examine disparities between immigrants from Mexico and Central America and the U.S. born in these four housing outcomes. Understanding more about the factors linked with the allocation of income to housing, homeownership, and the creation of household wealth have implications for whether families are able to afford health insurance, reside in safer, higher-quality housing, and survive unanticipated emergencies due to illness.
| McConnell, Eileen Díaz (2015) Hurdles or walls? Nativity, citizenship, legal status and Latino homeownership in Los Angeles. Soc Sci Res 53:19-33 |
| McConnell, Eileen Diaz (2013) Who has housing affordability problems? Disparities in Housing Cost burden by Race, Nativity and Legal Status in Los Angeles. Race Soc Probl 5:173-190 |
| McConnell, Eileen Diaz (2012) House Poor in Los Angeles: Examining Patterns of Housing-Induced Poverty by Race, Nativity, and Legal Status. Hous Policy Debate 22:605-631 |
