Limited Stock Market Participation Among Renters and Homeowners

The stock market participation rate among homeowners is twice as high as among renters. This paper builds a life-cycle portfolio choice model with endogenous housing tenure choice. A stylized form of preference heterogeneity generates a substantial difference in participation rates. A majority of households have a large savings motive and choose to be homeowners and participate. A minority of households have a small savings motive and find it less worthwhile to participate. Fewer of these households become homeowners. Difference-in-difference regressions on panel data do not find evidence of a crowding-out effect of homeownership on participation, supporting the message that preference heterogeneity matters.Received January 25, 2017; editorial decision March 21, 2018 by Editor Wei Jiang. Authors have furnished an Online Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.