Housing and Location Choices of Retiring Households : Evidence from France

In this paper, we study the mobility and housing choices of the elderly when retiringusing household data collected in France. From a theoretical viewpoint, retirees are likely todecrease their housing quantity because of an income loss when retiring, but they may alsoincrease it to benefit from more housing comfort for leisure. Using the 1992 Trois Générationssurvey, we first show that housing mobility at retirement is substantial in France, with a varietyof self-reported motives. Then, using the 1994-2001 French Europanel survey, we find evidenceof both upsizing and downsizing for mobile recent retirees. In many cases, housing adjustmentslead to a correction of the initial disequilibrium between the number of rooms and the number ofoccupants. However, a significant proportion of mobile recent retirees improve the quality oftheir dwelling.