The Crowding-out Effect of Homeownership on Fertility

Abstract

Mulder (Demogr Res 15:401–412, 2006) argues that homeownership has influences on a household’s fertility decision; however, literatures have concluded different findings regarding whether homeownership promotes or delays a family’s reproduction behavior. In this study, we construct the regional-based panel data comprising 23 counties and cities from 1994 to 2007 in Taiwan to investigate how and to what extent homeownership will affect fertility. Our empirical results show that the private homeownership rate is negatively related to the birthrate in Taiwan. It indicates that, under limited budget resources available in each household, the homeownership and reproduction decisions seem to compete and crowd out each other; however, from the results of the lagged models, the crowding-out effect diminishes as time goes by.