A model of household housing adjustment: confronting analytical issues

A causal model of household housing adjustment is tested. The variables of interest are propensity to move, housing satisfaction, neighborhood satisfaction, housing deficits, and household characteristics. Ordinary least squares regression is used to test the model. The analytical techniques include scaling and recoding to improve the distributions of the variables. It was found that levels of propensity to move are highest for households with the lowest levels of housing satisfaction. Neighborhood satisfaction is not a determinant of propensity to move. Households that are most satisfied with their housing have high neighborhood satisfaction and few housing deficits. Curvilinear relationships are found between age of the head of the household and propensity to move. Farm families have low levels of propensity to move despite low levels of satisfaction. Household size and community size had constraining influences on propensity to move