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Homeownership is one of the most significant investments made by individual Canadians. As such, it leads to the building of wealth over an individual's life course. The resulting asset yields housing services, which are particularly critical to families with children, and can be liquidated later in life for retirement income or other needs.

In this paper, we ask two questions. First, to what extent do Canadians of different ages, incomes, and family structures (including couples with and without children) acquire and retain homeownership, particularly after the age of 65?

Second, we ask whether the age profile of homeownership has changed over generations. Have succeeding generations of Canadians become any less likely to purchase a home during their life course, and do seniors today benefit to a lesser extent from the housing services that homeownership provides than seniors have benefited in the past?

Using data from eight Canadian censuses of population, conducted between 1971 and 2006, we examine these questions by following homeownership rates of various birth cohorts born in the 1910s through the 1970s, beginning with the young adults of each cohort through to seniors. We calculate ownership rates at both the household level and the individual level. At the household level, we selected the primary household maintainer (i.e., the person who pays for shelter costs) to calculate ownership rates by age, family income, and family structure.

We find a strong regularity in the age profile of homeownership across generations of Canadians. The homeownership rate rises quickly with the age of household maintainers in the period before the age of 40, and continues to climb thereafter at a slower pace until reaching a plateau near age 65. The homeownership rate changes little from age 65 to 74 but starts declining after age 75. Thus, the majority of seniors continue to receive the services associated with homeownership for more than 10 years after the age of 65.

We observe that the level at which homeownership plateaus has risen steadily across birth cohorts since the 1970s. The peak level of ownership rose from 73% for those born in the early 1910s to 78% for those born during World War II (WWII). Today, over three quarters of Canadian households own their homes by the age of 65.

Family income has been closely related to both the level of homeownership and the increase in homeownership since 1971. There was a substantial difference in homeownership across income quintiles throughout the period; this difference increased over time, because the homeownership rate declined for the lowest-income group but rose for higher-income groups.

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