Aging in place and housing over-consumption

Abstract Societies are aging and the number of households with heads or even allmembers over 65 is increasing rapidly. Many of these households are well estab-lished in the housing market and occupy housing at the apex of the housing choiceprocess. These houses are large, nearly always owned and with substantial equityvalue. The households that occupy such dwellings have lower mobility rates thanhouseholds in general and are likely, with low mobility rates, to continue to occupytheir houses even when they no longer need the same space as when they wereraising families. The paper examines the extent of this phenomenon in the Neth-erlands and traces under what circumstances older households are exchanging theselarge houses. The data, derived from the Housing Demand Survey in the Nether-lands, reveal that older households occupy very spacious housing, that they haverelatively long durations of stay, and that owners over 60 are nearly certain to be‘over-consuming’ housing with respect to equilibrium consumption. At the sametime, when older households do move, they reduce the amount of space they con-sume. The issue for society at large is whether the low mobility rates create abottleneck in access to spacious housing by younger families.

Keywords Residential mobility Æ Housing Æ Aging

This paper was originally designed and initiated in collaboration with Frans Dieleman. We wish toacknowledge our long time collaboration with Frans. We will miss his insight and creativity.

W. A. V. Clark (&)Los Angeles Geography Department, University of California, 1255 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles,CA 90095-15234, USAe-mail: [email protected]

M. C. DeurlooDepartment of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies,Amsterdam, The Netherlandse-mail: [email protected]

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J Housing Built Environ (2006) 21:257–270DOI 10.1007/s10901-006-9048-3

ORI GI N A L P A PE R

Aging in place and housing over-consumption

William A. V. Clark Æ Marinus C. Deurloo

Received: 10 July 2006 / Accepted: 10 July 2006 /Published online: 7 September 2006� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006

1 Introduction

All developed societies are beginning a substantial process of population aging. Inthe next several decades, populations will peak and begin declining and the pro-portion of older households will increase significantly (Lutz, Sanderson, & Scherbov,2001). Many, if not most of these households are well established in the housingmarket; they occupy large houses and apartments, consuming substantial amounts ofhousing space. Because they make fewer moves, and are aging in place, they are notreleasing housing space back onto the market. This paper examines the nature ofover-consumption in the Netherlands, its geography and correlates, and the links tochanges in the supply of housing.

The large body of research on residential mobility has documented the stronginter-connection between mobility and age, socio-economic status, space, and ten-ure. The amount of space is closely related to the likelihood of moving and has beenfound to be a trigger in the mobility process (Clark & Dieleman, 1996, Dieleman &Schouw, 1989). These findings have been incorporated into the disequilibrium modelof residential mobility, which posits that residential moves occur when householdsfall out of equilibrium in their housing consumption (Quigley & Weinberg, 1978;Hanushek & Quigley, 1978). Thus, households who add family members are likely toneed more space, be out of equilibrium in their housing consumption, and feel theneed to seek new housing to satisfy their new demands for increased space. Byextension, households who do not need more space and who are in equilibrium areless likely to consider moving. A household that was in equilibrium with a family oftwo adults and two children naturally becomes an over-consumer as the childrenleave the ‘nest’. It is this process which generates most of the increase in over-consumption of housing space. In fact, older households whose children leave afterhigh school or college are quite likely to make incremental gains in housing space asthese children move on to their own apartments and dwellings. The end product isincreased space consumption with age (Kendig, 1990). In this sense, aging in placecreates the spacious living that is characteristic of so many of the older households inthe Netherlands.

The life-course conceptualization provides an over-arching way to view themobility and aging processes. In the life course, life events revolve around marriageor cohabitation, the birth of children, and job changes and career advances. Theselife events are inter-related with moves from renting to owning and with moves upthe housing hierarchy (Clark, Deurloo, & Dieleman, 1984, 2003). These processesslow up, or even cease, as the household ages and children pass through the highschool years. For a period of time, households are much less mobile than formerlyand they are in the aging-in-place scenario. Only as partners become ill or deathoccurs, and sometimes not even in those situations, do households begin to considerdownsizing in their housing consumption.

2 Context and the Dutch housing market

It is in the context of changing European demographics that we examine the natureand extent of housing consumption and suggest a future disjuncture in the classiclink between households and the houses they occupy.

258 W. A. V. Clark, M. C. Deurloo

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All European societies, including the Netherlands, have had fundamental shifts intheir demographic composition in the last two decades. Fertility has declined byseveral magnitudes since the baby-boom years of the 50s and 60s. Now fertility inmuch of Europe hovers in the 1.3–1.8 range (the Netherlands is actually at the highend of this range) and there is little evidence that it will increase significantly in thecoming decade. Longevity is increasing, so the number of older persons will growand the dependency ratio – those who are retired relative to those of working age, or(65+)/(15–64)––will increase. The implications for our story about housing con-sumption are complicated.

On the one hand, increasing longevity will likely (without any policy to change theprocess) increase the tendency for households to stay in their spacious or veryspacious housing. On the other hand, the declining fertility will decrease the demandfor more housing space and perhaps ameliorate the tendency of older households toconsume a larger share of society’s housing space. If the tendency towards small-family households or no-family households continues, then some of the issues aboutover-consumption of residential space will become less critical, if they remain issuesat all.

Change in the size and composition of the population is just part of the matrix; thesupply of housing is the second element of any story about consumption and over-consumption. The Dutch housing market is undergoing a fairly major transforma-tion; the private production of housing is increasing while government subsidizedhousing as a proportion of all housing is decreasing (Salet, 1999). Three or fourdecades ago, the ratio of subsidized housing was about 50/50; now, it is closer to a 30/70 ratio of subsidized to private development (Boelhouwer, 2002). There is also atrend to shift from providing housing for low-income populations to providinghousing for middle-income and high-income groups to entice them to stay in cities(Kay, 2003).

The Netherlands has had a tradition of top-down planning policy with respect tohousing. For most of the decades immediately after World War II, a nationalhousing policy tightly controlled the development of new housing. There were largeand direct housing subsidies, and social rented housing made up half of the housingstock. A change in housing policy can be traced to about 1989 (Boelhouwer, 2002).A Dutch government memorandum shifted the focus to a ‘more market––lessgovernment’ orientation (Heerma, 1989). There have been reductions in subsidyoutlays along with a shift to building the majority of new housing in the owner-occupied for-sale sector of the housing market (Priemus, 1998, 1999; Salet, 1999). Amajor shift has occurred in the provision of replacement housing in inner-city areas.The Dutch government has stipulated that renewal housing in these inner-city areaswill be market-rate dwellings and as little as 30% will be in subsidized housing. Inaddition, only a small part of the social housing will be accessible by low-incomehouseholds (Priemus, 1999).

A large and growing body of research examines the changing Dutch housingmarket (Dieleman, 2001). It includes studies of the changing effect of homeowner-ship on residential mobility (Helderman, Mulder, & van Ham, 2004), the location ofthe elderly in large housing estates (Filius & van Kempen, 2005), and the probabilityof leaving the ownership market in later stages of the life course (Dieleman, Clark,& Deurloo, 1995). By and large there has not been a significant focus on elderlymigration per se (Hooimeijer, Dieleman, & Kuijpers-Linde, 1993), and the researchwe present fills a gap in the research contributions to date. Our analysis comes at a

Aging in place and housing over-consumption 259

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time when the shifts in government policy stress a less intrusive government role onthe market mechanism and greater freedom of choice for consumers. The implica-tion of the shift is to encourage more private housing, which is often larger and morespacious than previously constructed social housing. By extension this will increasethe likelihood that owners and stayers of longer duration will live in spacious or veryspacious housing as the private sector expands and the social sector contracts. Thecore question guiding the analysis is how large the over-consumption by elderlyhouseholds is in the Netherlands in relation to the size and composition of thehousing stock, and under what circumstances are over-consuming households willingto move to a dwelling that better fits their household size. Our research both doc-uments the extent to which the Dutch population is ‘over-consuming’ housing andanalyzes the implications of this over-consumption.

3 Data

The data for the analysis of housing consumption are derived from the HousingDemand Survey 2002 sample (WBO, 2002). The WBO has been used for over35 years by the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Envi-ronment (MVROM) for policy-making, for monitoring, and for policy-evaluation.Together, the KWR (Qualitative Housing Registration) and the WBO form thebasic pieces of the knowledge infrastructure about housing. Both inquiries providethe information needed for this research. The KWR is primarily oriented to houses,the WBO to occupants. The WBO is one of the most extensive samples in theNetherlands. In 2002 the sample size was approximately 100,000 households. It givesinsight in the composition of households, the housing situation, the housing wishes,and the moving behavior of the Dutch population. However, it does not includethose living in institutions (homes for the elderly). Among those over 80 years ofage, this is quite a sizeable proportion of the population.

Housing consumption is usually measured in terms of a relationship betweenpersons and rooms or square feet of living space. A housing stress measure––definedas the number of rooms per person less the expected number of rooms based on aformula for required rooms depending on family structure––has been used regularlyin creating a measure of housing consumption (Clark, Deurloo, & Dieleman, 2000).In this paper we use a variant of the housing stress index. It is a simple definition,developed by the Municipality of Amsterdam, to examine the levels of housingconsumption. The four-level categorization uses the difference between number ofrooms and number of persons to distinguish between crowded, neutral, spacious, andvery spacious housing consumption. Neutral lodging is defined as one more roomthan the number of persons in the household. Crowded lodging is all housing situ-ations with less space than neutral lodging. Spacious lodging is all housing situationswith two rooms more than the number of persons. And very spacious lodging appliesto situations with 3+ rooms more than the number of persons in the household. Theadvantage of this categorization is that it is nearly independent of the size of thehousehold. That makes it easier to compare groups, segments, environments, andsub-sectors of a city and to make analyses of the trends in housing consumption.Additional variables in the analysis measure individual characteristics, including age,household composition, and socio-economic data.


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4 Analysis and results

There is no question that urban areas in the Netherlands now have much moresingle-family and spacious housing than only two decades ago. The demand forowner-occupied housing consistently outstrips supply and will likely continue to doso in the foreseeable future as households seek to purchase larger single-familyattached or detached dwellings. Moreover, as housing development continues toexpand outside the major metropolitan areas, we can expect further expansion oflarger housing in the suburbs of the major centers. From the mid-1980s the size ofnew houses increased significantly (MVROM, 2004, p. 206). By the addition of largerhouses and demolition of smaller houses, the average dwelling size in the wholestock has also increased slowly. Large-scale building locations near the cities werecreated, with mostly single-family houses, the so-called ‘VINEX’ quarters. As aconsequence of greater prosperity, the demand for owner-occupied houses has in-creased.

In this context we examine descriptive results of housing occupation, to gaininsight into which types of households live in (very) spacious housing, and weexamine models that predict the likelihood of having excess residential space. Wealso consider at what point in the aging process people may move to smallerdwellings and which types of older households do so.

4.1 Consumption in the Dutch housing market

As expected from theory, housing over-consumption increases with age (Table 1).Particularly in the first period after the empty-nest phase, in the age category60–69 years, housing ‘over-consumption’ (spacious or very spacious housing) ishighest and nearly all households in that age group are over-consuming. However, thepercentage in spacious or very spacious housing begins to decrease moderately afterthe age of 70 years, suggesting that at older ages a proportion of these households aredownsizing and moving to smaller houses. This is indeed a nearly universal story. Itapplies to owners as well as renters and holds for all types of households (householdswith children are left out of the table, because this is a small group with respect toover-consumption). It is also true for all income categories, except for the highestincomes, who postpone their reduction in space even longer. It is, however, only part

Table 1 Dimensions of Dutch housing consumption: percentage in spacious or very spaciousdwellings

<50 yrs 50–59 yrs 60–69 yrs 70–79 yrs 80+yrs

All households 48.8 69.5 80.2 74.9 67.4TenureRenter 44.0 64.7 72.9 67.7 61.1Owner 52.4 72.5 86.7 86.3 83.8

CompositionOne person 68.6 85.3 86.8 82.0 71.8Couples 67.2 72.2 78.5 68.6 57.9

Income<Min wage 49.4 75.3 81.5 76.4 70.2Twice the modal income 46.6 68.1 84.6 79.1 71.8Three times the modal income 52.6 69.3 85.2 86.5 67.8


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of the story. The difference between the older and the younger age groups is also aresult of a cohort effect; the younger birth cohorts have grown up in more spacioushousing and are more used to owner-occupation (Helderman et al., 2004).

There also are marked differences between groups of the same age category. Theproportion in over-consumption, as we would expect, is greater for owners than forrenters, greater for one-person households (in contrast to couples), and also greaterfor higher-income categories. But with respect to income, the differences betweenwealthier and poorer households are not as great as might be expected. With anincrease in income we expected a more pronounced increase in the percentage ofhouseholds in spacious dwellings. It is true that very wealthy households are verylikely to be in spacious or very spacious housing. Indeed, the drop-off with age issomewhat less for those with three times the modal income. Still, the fact that 81.5%of households with less than minimum wage in the 60–69 age group are in spaciousor very spacious housing––along with the fact that so are 85.2% of households withthree times the modal income––emphasizes the similarities rather than the differ-ences. Clearly, income matters. But income polarization decreases substantially afterretirement age, and it is age that appears to be the controlling factor in over-con-sumption. The outcome is a byproduct of the aging process rather than of access toincome per se. Older households with higher incomes are likely to be owners, andownership brings with it greater housing consumption, so in this sense income isbeing translated into higher levels of over-consumption. The results also speak to thepast, representing the effects of socially subsidized housing for the Dutch population.Over the past 20 years, older households have increasingly occupied better andnewer houses, but these houses are more expensive. Older households have thusbecome more dependent on rent subvention. Half of the older (65+) single-personhouseholds receives rent subvention (de Klerk and Timmermans, 1999). Of course,these findings are only based on cross-tabulations and can be clarified further bymultivariate analyses. We return to this subject in the last part of the paper.

4.2 The spatial patterns of consumption

The presence of older households (50+ years) in spacious or very spacious housing isgeographically variable across the Netherlands. Can a spatial pattern be observed?We mapped the four-digit postcodes (182 of 4000) where a very large share––morethan 55% (the average + 2 standard deviations)––of the older households (50+) inthe postcode were in very spacious housing (Fig. 1, the dark gray areas). A largenumber of postcodes had too few observations (less than 10) to make reliablejudgments about over-consumption. For the remaining postcodes, the percentage ofolder households in very spacious housing is below 55%. The visual pattern isstriking. It is immediately obvious that the postcodes with over-consumption ofhousing are widely scattered, but many are in the Green Heart of the Randstad oralong the coast. Suburban areas or small towns within commuting distance of thelarge cities are often areas of over-consumption: for example, Zeist near Utrecht andHaarlem near Amsterdam. Table 2 gives the names and level of urbanization of the17 municipalities that have 2 or more postcode areas with a very large percentage ofolder households in very spacious houses. Table 3 characterizes all 182 postcodeswith a very large share of older households in spacious houses with respect tourbanization level and environment type. The conclusion we may draw from these


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two tables is that the level of urbanization matters. Nonetheless, many of the con-centrations are smaller urban centers, while some postcode areas––in Apeldoorn,Heemstede, Heiloo and Velp, for example––exhibit what we might call village-likecharacteristics.

Additional data on housing consumption by level of urbanization re-emphasizesthe general tendency towards greater consumption with age, reaching a maximum inthe age group of 60–69 and slowly diminishing thereafter. This tendency is seensystematically in all urbanization groups, but also across the scale of urbanization. Itis much higher in suburban and rural contexts (Table 4).1 Over-consumption by

Fig. 1 Spatial concentrations of older households in over-consumption

1 In tables 3 and 4 we use urbanization level based on municipality and environment type based onthe four-digit postcode. The Netherlands has about 500 municipalities and 4000 postcodes. Apostcode averages about 4000 inhabitants.


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older households is clearly lagging in very dense urban contexts. This is, of course,attributable to the smaller houses in these contexts (more multi-family dwellings anda higher building density). In newer suburban construction, housing is generallylarger than that formerly built in the inner-city areas.

Table 2 Municipalities with more than one postcode with a very large share of older households inspacious housing

# postcodes Urbanization level of municipality

Apeldoorn 3 2Assen 3 3Boxtel 2 4Eindhoven 3 2Haarlem 3 1Heemstede 2 3Heiloo 2 3Hengelo 2 2Hilversum 2 2Oosterhout 2 3Raalte 2 4‘s-Gravenhage 3 1Tilburg 2 2Velp 2 3Venlo 4 3Zeist 2 3Zwolle 2 2

Table 3 Frequency distribution of the urbanization level and environment type for the182 postcodes with a very large share of older households in spacious houses

Urbanization level of municipality Frequency Environment type of postcode Frequency

1 Dense urban 10 1 center urban 42 Urban 37 2 residential urban 393 Suburban 50 3 suburban 324 Semi-rural 59 4 residential low urban 905 Rural 26 5 open space/Agric. 16Total 182 Total 182

Table 4 Distribution of Dutch households who are in spacious or very spacious housing by level ofurbanization

Urbanization level <50 yrs 50–59 yrs 60–69 yrs 70–79 yrs 80+yrs

Dense urban 42.7 60.5 70.1 67.2 62.2Urban 50.4 68.3 78.1 75.1 68.3Suburban 50.8 73.7 83.6 74.9 69.9Semi-rural 49.5 71.9 84.1 78.5 67.5Rural 52.3 73.2 85.1 79.9 71.3


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4.3 Stability, mobility, and consumption

The classic housing equilibrium/disequilibrium story is portrayed in Table 5. Alarger proportion of households with short durations of stay are more often inequilibrium with the space in the house. After a longer duration of stay (5 years ormore), a situation of spacious living has emerged. After even longer durations theprobability has increased to an even larger discrepancy between the space needs ofthe households and the available space. Even more households are in very spacioushouses. The difference between the percentage living very spaciously for the under-50-year-olds and over-50-year-olds for households with a long duration of stay (over10 years) speaks to the effect of family downsizing as young people move out. Thereis some indication that the housing was spacious before the life-course transitionfrom a family to a couple or single person. Note that the percentage living in veryspacious housing is significantly higher for all age groups than for those who havemuch shorter lengths of stay. So, those who have acquired spacious living areresistant to downsizing, a position which is in line with the main characteristic ofolder households with (very) long durations of stay.

Although the paper is primarily about over-consumption, we include a section inTable 5 on those older households who are not in over-consumption. Many of thesehouseholds are in fact housed less spaciously than many singles or couples. Theyform a small percentage of all older households. But it is worth noting that thesehouseholds do exist across all age groups and recent elderly movers (80+ years) arequite likely to be in crowded living situations (Table 5).

Table 5 Housing consumption by duration

Length of stay Age group

<50 50–59 60–69 70–79 80+

%Living in neutral consumption by duration0–1 year 28.9 32.2 34.4 47.7 48.82–4 years 29.6 24.4 28.9 42.3 44.15–10 years 30.7 23.3 22.5 33.2 48.311–20 years 32.0 20.6 16.5 22.1 30.6>20 years 26.2 18.6 9.3 8.9 11.4

% Living spaciously0–1 year 31.0 30.6 39.7 33.1 29.02–4 years 30.4 34.6 42.6 39.0 38.65–10 years 25.9 33.7 41.4 40.5 40.111–20 years 24.4 32.4 38.0 40.2 44.1>20 years 22.6 32.1 31.7 31.3 30.1

% Living very spaciously0–1 year 23.6 26.8 19.4 11.7 6.32–4 years 20.6 30.8 24.1 12.4 8.25–10 years 19.7 35.4 32.3 23.0 7.711–20 years 16.3 38.3 42.5 34.6 20.3>20 years 29.6 41.0 56.6 58.8 56.4

% Living in crowded housing0–1 year 16.5 10.3 6.5 7.4 16.12–4 years 19.3 10.1 4.3 6.3 9.15–10 years 23.7 7.5 3.8 3.3 3.911–20 years 27.2 8.7 2.9 3.2 5.0>20 years 21.7 8.4 2.4 1.0 2.1


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Mobility does lead to changes in housing consumption. As we know from the life-course literature, younger households are trading up and increasing their space,whereas older households in general are downsizing (Table 6). When youngerhouseholds (age < 50) move, they increase the size of their living accommodation.When older households (age 50+) move, they decrease the size of their livingaccommodation. For older households, the percentage living in spacious or veryspacious housing after a move is only about 50 percent, down from 70 to 80% priorto the move. At the same time, the proportion of older households who move isquite low; they do not willingly give up the extra space. The fact that older house-holds downsize when they move is related to the difficulty of maintaining largehouses with increasing age and greater frailty. Still, older households do not give upextra space easily; they will relinquish their extra space only when it is no longertenable. Indeed, survey data reveal that from two-thirds to more than 90% of oldermovers indicate that health reasons, needing care, or too much space was a primaryreason for moving (Table 7).

As we know from the life-course literature, younger households, as expected,increase their space after a move. In contrast, older households by and large havefewer rooms after the move. This is nearly universal for the very oldest age groupsand is true for the majority of those over 50 who now live in crowded or neutralhousing conditions (Table 8). That being so, among those who moved into spaciousor very spacious lodging, even up to the age of 70, the majority did not reduce theirspace: 28% had the same number of rooms and 26% had more rooms after themove. The table provides a window on the contrasts between expanding and con-tracting families. Sixty-six percent of younger households who gained space hadmore rooms; a small share had fewer rooms. Even younger households––who, ingeneral, were living in crowded or neutral conditions––were very likely to have thesame number of rooms or more. Older households, prominent in the first column,were likely to have fewer rooms––the effect of downsizing after the move.

4.4 Modeling over-consumption of older households

There are more than 4 million Dutch single-person and couple households (61.2% ofall households), and 76.3% of these households live in spacious or very spacioushousing. Perhaps even more notable is that nearly 40% (39.7%) of these householdslive in very spacious housing, with excess space of three or more rooms perhousehold. In the Netherlands, small households often are in larger houses than theyneed.

Table 6 Difference in spacebetween those who stayed andthose who moved in the last2 years

Age group % in spacious or in very spacioushousing

Stayed Moved

<50 47.0 55.250–59 70.7 56.960–69 81.9 58.670–79 77.4 44.580+ 69.5 35.1


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Our modeling questions revolve around explaining where and how over-con-sumption occurs for single-person households and couples. In the context of theabove comments about single-person and couple households, we restrict the mod-eling to older (60+) single persons and couples. In fact, it is relatively easy to cor-rectly predict over-consumption for these small older households, simply becausenearly all of them are in over-consumption. Thus, to turn it around, in some sense itis a question of who is not over-consuming. We take the dependent variable yes/noin over-consumption or not (versus in neutral or under-consumption) and ask whichhouseholds are in each category. As tenure has always been a distinguishing char-acter of housing consumption, we further distinguish between owners and renters.For both models we use forward stepwise logistic regression with 10 independentvariables: (1) suitability of dwelling to seniors; (2) household size (single person orcouple); (3) duration of stay (years); (4) age of the household head; (5) dwelling no/yes located in the four largest cities; (6) income -7 categories; (7) cost of dwelling; (8)environment type; (9) urbanization -type of municipality; and (10) a statistical indexof housing cost (Table 9). These variables measure demographic characteristics andcharacteristics of the urbanization level or the environmental type.

For renters, by step 4 very little explanation is added in further steps. By thefourth step, 77.4% of the cases are predicted correctly: 91.2% of the cases in over-consumption and 45.0% of the cases not in over-consumption. So, while the modeldoes well overall, it does less well in predicting who is not over-consuming. There arelarge effects from ‘dwelling suited to seniors’ and ‘household size’. The effects of‘duration of stay’ and ‘age head of household’ are modest. For owners, in contrast,five variables are sufficient for explanation. After the fifth step 89.4% of the cases

Table 7 Percentage statingthat health, or need of care, orthe previous house too largewas the reason for the move, orthat has moved to a dwellingsuited to seniors

Age group Percentage

<50 13.2%50–59 38.6%60–69 63.7%70–79 83.9%80+ 93.0%

Table 8 Households that moved; change in number of rooms after the move

Age group % Fewer rooms % Same # of rooms % More rooms

(a) After the move living in crowded or neutral lodging<50 26.8 35.4 37.950–59 59.7 25.9 14.460–69 69.8 26.2 4.070–79 72.6 22.7 4.780+ 79.8 18.3 1.9

(b) After the move living in spacious or very spacious lodging<50 12.1 21.5 66.450–59 31.8 31.1 37.060–69 45.6 28.7 25.770–79 57.1 25.5 17.480+ 63.3 28.3 8.4


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are predicted correctly: 99.2% of the cases in over-consumption and 13.6% of thecases not in over-consumption. The explanation for being in over-consumption isagain mainly related to ‘dwelling suited to seniors’ and ‘household size’. Duration ofstay and ‘age head of household’ have modest effects. Type of environment is also arelevant predictor in this model. Especially households in ‘center urban’ and ‘outsidecenter’ environments are less likely to over-consume, almost certainly a function ofthe availability of the stock. Overall, there seems to be little or no systematic reasonfor not over-consuming. As we said earlier, it is an outcome of aging in place and theadvances in the quality and size of the Dutch housing stock that have occurred overthe past two decades.

The models for renters and owners are quite similar, which increases our confi-dence in the predictive variables. The importance of the suitability of the dwelling toseniors, in both models, is larger than we had expected. It is, however, in agreementwith a previous result of our analysis, where it was found that seniors will only giveup extra space when they are forced to – mainly for health reasons. There are alsodifferences between the two models. The share of senior owners in over-consump-tion is larger than for renters, and for the owner households, it is almost impossibleto find explanatory variables for not over-consuming; for this group of owners, over-consumption is almost inherent. The type of environment has some quantifiableinfluence on owners. Older renter households give up extra space more easily when

Table 9 Logistic regression models for no/yes over-consumption by single-person and couplehouseholds aged 60+

Step Variable Effect B S.E.of B

% Correctpredicted

NAGELKERKER Square

(a) Renters*1 Dwelling suited to

seniorsPositive +1.545 .007 70.1 .190

2 Single-person orcouple household

Negativefor couples

+1.339 .006 75.6 .253

3 Duration of stay Positive +0.048 .000 76.7 .2994 Age head of household Negative –0.044 .000 77.4 .319

(b) Owners**1 Duration of stay Positive +0.047 .000 88.6 .1072 Dwelling suited to seniors Positive +1.067 .009 88.6 .1473 Single-person or

couple householdNegative

for couples+1.464 .011 88.6 .178

4 Age head of household Negative –0.060 .001 88.9 .2055 Env. type (5 Types,

see Table 3)Positive 89.4 .231

type1 –1.168 .017type2 –0.886 .014type3 –0.155 .017type4 –0.142 .014

* Forward stepwise method with 10 predictors, 4 steps

After step 4 77.4% of the cases predicted correctly: 45.0% of those not in over-consumption, 91.2%of those in over-consumption** Forward stepwise method with 10 predictors, 5 steps

After step 5 89.4% of the cases predicted correctly: 13.6% of those not in over-consumption, 99.2%of those in over-consumption


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the dwelling is not explicitly suited to seniors, but they also give it up when they aregetting older.

5 Overview and conclusions

This paper has documented the remarkable increase in housing consumption withaging and changes in household composition. Increasing longevity in the Nether-lands is creating a nation of older households who stay in their houses long after theneed for so much space has vanished. Remarkably, more than three-quarters ofDutch single-person and couple households live in spacious or very spaciousdwellings. Given the concerns about providing adequate housing only two decadesago, this is a very significant change. With the continuing aging of the Dutch pop-ulation, the trend is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

The evidence from the analysis of consumption across age categories and of themoving behavior of older households emphasizes that these households will notwillingly give up their spacious dwellings. They will keep the extra dwelling space aslong as possible and will give it up only when they are more or less forced to, andthat is mainly for health reasons.

Does it matter whether older households over-use housing? As we noted in theintroduction to our paper the question is not easily answered for the long term. IfDutch society continues having lower birth rates and smaller families, the push toincrease the housing stock may have had the desired outcome of improving housingequilibrium. On the other hand, to the extent that seniors do not release housingspace, there will be reduced access for younger families. This is especially true forthe growing immigrant families, where family sizes are larger and where spaceconsumption is more critical. In the neighborhoods with large numbers of suchfamilies, there may be more younger families in crowded housing (Musterd, Os-tendorf, & de Vos, 2003).

The shift in Dutch housing policy is likely to continue the shift to larger and morespacious dwellings in general. As the Dutch population ages and as the populationthat is retired grows as a proportion of the total Dutch population, there is quitelikely to be an increase in special communities for elders and senior retirees ingeneral. Although the Dutch housing context has not yet generated the equivalent ofthe retirement communities such as Sun City in Arizona, such an outcome is cer-tainly possible. Still, in the Netherlands such communities will be in competition withretirement and vacation housing built in Spain, Greece and other climaticallyattractive regions. Just how the changes in the growing aging population will impactthe housing market are not yet clear, but that they will impact the market is certain.This paper has already shown one of the outcomes: much greater housing con-sumption in the aging and post-working years.

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