Flutterby™! : The American Dream

Grace Wong Bucchianeri surveyed 600 women in Ohio, and then cross-referenced that information with tax records and census data to look at home ownership vs happiness. The paper is The American Dream or The American Delusion? The Private and External Benefits of Homeownership:

An interesting portrait of homeowners emerges from my analysis. While homeowners report higher life satisfaction, more joy from both home and neighborhood and better moods on an unadjusted basis, these promising differences become insignificant and much smaller in magnitude once I control for a basic set of confounding factors: household income, housing value and health status. Overall, I find little evidence that homeowners are happier by any of the following definitions: life satisfaction, overall mood, overall feeling, general moment-to-moment emotions (i.e., affect) and affect at home. The average homeowner, however, consistently derives more pain (but no more joy) from their house and home. Although they are also more likely to be 12 pounds heavier, report a lower health status and less joy from health, controlling for the less favorable health status does not change the results. ...

And note that this was done back in the middle of the housing boom. Of course it was also Ohio... Newspaper story, Newspaper story, and the inevitable MeFi entry. This whole thing also echoes Philip Greenspun's observation:

If you can rent anything decent, try to avoid buying property. Think about the most interesting people you know. Chances are, most of them are renters. People who rent talk about the books that they've read, the trips that they've taken, the skills that they are learning, the friends whose company they are enjoying. Property owners complain about the local politicians, the high rate of property tax, the difficulty of finding competent tradespeople, the high value of their own (very likely crummy) house or condo, and what kinds of furniture and kitchen appliances they are contemplating buying. Property owners are boring. The most boring parts of a property owner's personality are those which relate to his or her ownership of real estate.