Hispanic Homeownership Advancement through Recession and Boom: Tracking Cohort Aging and Replacement with 5-Year American Community Survey Data in the United States, Los Angeles, and a Gentrifying District

Dowell Myers
David Flores Moctezuma
Sol Price School of Public Policy
University of Southern California
Population Dynamics Research Group

Aging baby boomers create an imbalanced age structure in the housing market, while the growing numbers of younger Hispanic homeowners hold potential to absorb the growing elderly sell-off. This article addresses the gap between Hispanic and White homeownership. It quantifies the volume of homeownership entrances and exits in different ages in recent years, distinguishing periods of recession and boom. A novel method is proposed for measuring cohort life-cycle flows into and out of homeownership with the recently released 5-year files from the American Community Survey. This method captures the market slowdown during the Great Recession downturn, followed by a strong recovery after 2014. Findings from the cohort life-cycle method are starkly contrasted with misleading measurements derived from simple age group growth in the same periods. The crucial importance of growth in Hispanic homeowners is investigated at multiple levels of geography. Changes tracked in 10-million-resident Los Angeles County resemble a U.S. future of fewer older White homeowners being replaced by a large and growing Hispanic resident base. Contrasting this, in a gentrifying district near downtown Los Angeles, we find Hispanics are the departing elderly and Whites (and Asians) are the young replacements.