Can housing wealth alleviate poverty among Britain’s older population

This paper investigates the scope for housing wealth to alleviate poverty among Britain’s older population by modelling the potential effect of equity-release schemes on the net incomes of older homeowners using data from the 1993–94 and 1994–95 Family Expenditure Surveys. We find that, for the older population in general, the potential impact of equity release on poverty is limited by the positive association between homeownership and income in later life. The scope for equity release to enhance incomes is restricted mainly to the oldest age-groups where life expectancy is short. However, it is at these oldest ages that incomes are lowest and although we estimate that equity release cannot provide much benefit to those in the greatest poverty, the additions to income that equity release could bring to some of the oldest homeowners are not insignificant