Age at Arrival and Immigrants' Housing Tenure: Evidence from the UK

We study the effect of age at arrival on immigrants' homeownership probability using a dataset representative of the population resident in the UK in 2014-2016. Age at arrival has previously been found to play a significant role in immigrants' life outcomes. But while most papers study certain age groups and a limited number of geographies, we observe immigrants of all ages at arrival and the full range of countries of birth. Consistent with the literature, we find no significant difference between immigrants arriving under the age of 18 and native Brits when it comes to owning a home in later life, controlling for other factors. However, immigrants exhibit significantly lower probabilities of being homeowners the later they enter the country, and this pattern holds for most regions of birth. Only those from South-East Asia and Pacific who immigrate at later stages in their lives are significantly more likely to own their homes than otherwise comparable people born in the UK, while non-UK, Western European immigrants are most similar to the UK-born. The differences between age groups even largely exist when we compare first-generation immigrants with second-generation immigrants, whom we deem to be a better comparison group from a cultural perspective.