Second homes: households' life dream or (wrong) investment?

While the purchase of a primary home is mainly motivated by essential consumption needs, buying a second house has been generally considered a good investment decision. However, second homes may results in many different final uses, ranging from holidays and profitable uses to definitely unprofitable ones. We contribute to the scant literature on second houses by exploring the case of second homes that remain unrented and represent the most notable unprofitable use. The empirical investigation relies on the 2002-2012 Bank of Italy Survey on Household Income and Wealth which, among other things, provides plenty of information on real estates, including the actual use. Our results on the unprofitable use of second homes highlight: a gender gap, whereby this case tends to be more clearly associated with male decision makers; no association with household’s economic characteristics; and, strong association with the specific real estate features, with inherited dwellings more likely to end up being unprofitably used. Thus our results, besides casting some doubts on the goodness of second homes as an investment decision, may have important policy implications on the housing and rental market and call for policy or regulatory interventions

The Population ageing in Italy: facts and impact on household portfolios

This paper aims to assess the impact of ageing on household portfolios in Italy and hence ultimately on financial markets. To this end, the analysis is carried out in two steps. First, the dimension of population ageing in Italy is assessed by means of both historical and forecast data on the structure of Italian population. Second, based on data taken from the Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) over the last decade, we analyse the average household portfolio in relation to demographic characteristics. The main findings are: first, Italy turns out to be one of the countries most affected by ageing; second, financial choices of Italian households are sensibly affected by age. Thus, the exceptional ageing in Italy might have relevant consequences on the Italian financial market

Does homeownership partly explain low participation in supplementary pension schemes?

We used nine waves of the Bank of Italy’s Survey on Household income and Wealth (1995- 2012) to investigate a possible trade-off between homeownership and individual participation in a supplementary pension scheme. Italy lends itself to this type of investigation because the Italian public pension system has been heavily reformed in the period, providing in principle incentives for participation, and the homeownership rate is very high. The impact of homeownership is captured in two ways: by a dummy for being homeowner and by an index defined as the share of housing wealth over total wealth. Our results show that indeed, after controlling for a vast array of socio-economic characteristics and allowing for unobserved individual heterogeneity, both measures of homeownership are negatively associated with participation in supplementary pension schemes and that such an effect does not disappear even after the 2007 reform

Is it money or brains? The determinants of intra-family decision power

We empirically study the determinants of intra-household decision power with respect to economic and financial choices using a direct measure provided in the 1989-2010 Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth. Focusing on a sample of couples, we evaluate the effect of each spouse's characteristics, household characteristics, and background variables. We find that the probability that the wife is in charge is affected by household characteristics such as family size and total income and wealth, but more importantly that it increases with the difference between hers and her husband's characteristics in terms of age, education, and income. The main conclusion is that decision-making power over family economics is not only determined by strictly economic differences, as suggested by previous studies, but also by differences in human capital and experience. Finally, exploiting the time dimension of our dataset, we show that this pattern is increasing over time