Mortgage debt and household vulnerability: Evidence from Spain before and during the global financial crisis
International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis
ISSN: 1753-8270
Article publication date: 1 August 2016
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the financial vulnerability of the Spanish households derived from their primary residence mortgage debt payments. This paper shown as the economic and financial crisis triggered after the burst of the housing bubble brought an unemployment shock and a fall in the disposable family income, which alarmingly aggravated the financial vulnerability of the mortgaged households. Consequently, the number of financially vulnerable households almost doubled.
Design/methodology/approach
Econometric model of discrete election.
Findings
The most vulnerable households – and therefore those with a higher risk of mortgage payment default – are those whose family head is a married and self-employed female. In contrast, in social housing the mortgaged households have been less vulnerable in the context of economic and financial crisis and unlike what would have been initially expected, higher education levels have not acted as a protective factor against households’ financial vulnerability.
Originality/value
There is a great need to understand how the financial health of the mortgaged families that bought their primary residence has deteriorated in a context of significant changes in macroeconomic conditions. This need is specially pressing in a country such as Spain which is one of the OECD’s countries with a higher rate of household property and which shows a sector of highly mortgaged households.
Keywords
Citation
Sánchez-Martínez, M.T., Sanchez-Campillo, J. and Moreno-Herrero, D. (2016), "Mortgage debt and household vulnerability: Evidence from Spain before and during the global financial crisis", International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 400-420. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHMA-07-2015-0038
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited