Shan Hui
Federal Reserve Board of Governors, 20th and C Street NW, Washington DC, 20551.
J Urban Econ. 2010 Mar 1;67(2):194-205. doi: 10.1016/j.jue.2009.08.004.
The 2000-05 housing market boom in the U.S. has caused sharp increases in residential property taxes. Housing-rich but income-poor elderly homeowners often complain about rising tax burdens, and anecdotal evidence suggests that some move to reduce their tax burden. There has been little systematic analysis, however, of the link between property tax levels and the mobility rate of elderly homeowners. This paper investigates this link using household-level panel data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and a newly collected data set on state-provided property tax relief programs. These relief programs generate variation in effective property tax burdens that is not due solely to arguably endogenous local community choices about taxes and expenditure programs. The findings provide evidence suggesting that higher property taxes raise mobility among elderly homeowners. The point estimates from instrumental variable estimation using relief programs to generate instruments suggest that a $100 increase in annual property taxes is associated with a 0.73 percentage point increase in the two-year mobility rate for homeowners over the age of 50. This is an eight percent increase from the baseline two-year mobility rate of nine percent. These results are robust to alternative specifications.
2000 - 2005年美国房地产市场的繁荣导致了住宅房产税的大幅增加。拥有大量房产但收入微薄的老年房主经常抱怨税收负担不断加重，而且有传闻称一些人会搬家以减轻税收负担。然而，对于房产税水平与老年房主流动率之间的联系，几乎没有系统的分析。本文利用健康与退休研究（HRS）的家庭层面面板数据以及新收集的关于州政府提供的房产税减免项目的数据集，对这种联系进行了调查。这些减免项目产生了有效房产税负担的差异，而这种差异并非仅仅源于地方社区在税收和支出项目方面可能存在的内生性选择。研究结果表明，较高的房产税会提高老年房主的流动率。使用减免项目作为工具变量进行估计得到的点估计结果显示，对于50岁以上的房主，每年房产税增加100美元与两年流动率提高0.73个百分点相关。这比9%的基线两年流动率高出了8%。这些结果在不同的设定下都是稳健的。
