A Correlation Study on same couple and housing price in Liberal and Conservative areas
I was reading the news when came a cross this article.
A controversial new study suggests that in neighborhoods
where extreme conservatism prevails, the presence of one more same-sex couple
for every 1,000 households is linked to a one per cent drop in housing prices.
In liberal neighborhoods, by contrast, researchers find the associated effect
of gays and lesbians on housing prices to be positive.
The study, which appears in the Journal of Urban Economics,
draws data from more than 20,000 home sales, and controls for such explanatory factors as access to services, race, education, income, housing
characteristics and quality of nearby schools.
"Gays and lesbians feel that they're not welcome in
certain areas," says Susane Leguizamon, a professor of economics at Tulane
University. "This study suggests it's not just a feeling; people are
responding to the presence of gays and lesbians in the ways we'd expect."
Leguizamon suggests cohabitating same-sex couples are
actually quite visible to their neighbours, and thus can have an effect on what
people will pay to come or go — much the same way ethnicity has been shown to
do in other studies.
She and co-author David Christafore used voting outcomes of
the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act to classify neighborhood values (the Act
stated that marriage could only be entered into by a man and a woman), and
called on census data to determine the number of same-sex couples in the area.
Affirming previous research, their analysis showed that
sexual diversity was positively correlated with housing prices in most
neighborhoods — and most significantly in very liberal areas, dubbed
"gayborhoods."
In communities with high levels of conservatism, however,
greater concentrations of same-sex couples was linked with lower housing
prices.
"It does serve to justify gays' and lesbians' feeling
that they're the targets of prejudice or discrimination in the housing market,"
says Leguizamon. "To what extent, compared to their perceptions, is still
up for debate."
A 2009 study reported that 20 percent of gays and lesbians
consider themselves to have been victims of either price or property
discrimination at some point. Importantly, however, research led by Richard
Florida at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management has
consistently shown that higher concentrations of gay people are linked with
economic prosperity, innovation and creativity within a region.
mharris(at)postmedia.com
Twitter.com/popcultini
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