Staying together for the sake of the home?: house price shocks and partnership dissolution in the UK

The paper explores the importance of unanticipated house price shocksfor marital dissolution in the UK by using individual household datafrom the British Household Panel Survey and county level house pricedata from the Halifax house price index. Results suggest that positiveand negative house price shocks have asymmetric effects on theprobability of partnership dissolution. Negative house price shockssignificantly increase the risk of partnership dissolution, whereaspositive house price shocks do not have a significant effect in general.The destabilizing effect of negative house price shocks is particularlypronounced for couples with dependent children, low family income andhigh mortgage debt. Results are robust to a wide variety ofspecifications.