The Effect of Homeownership on Labour Mobility in the Netherlands

In order to verify the endogeneity bias and the spurious correlation of residential tenure and labour force flexibility, and to classify the effects of the former to the latter and vice versa, the chapter makes use of longitudinal data sets rather than macro- or meso-economic information of individual workers. All the information was retrieved from the tax department of the Netherlands, the Income Panel Research (IPR), where 75,000 employees were followed across a specified time frame. Movements of both markets are looked upon so as to approximate the influence of homeownership on job mobility as well as the possibility of losing one's employment. Various factors from the IPR data are found to be relevant in the analysis such as age, income bracket, family structure, gender, residential status, and housing duration. Along with previously mentioned paradigms (i.e. Munch et al.'s and Oswald's), this research utilises a job duration framework with multiple ('competing') hazards.