Residential satisfaction of elderly households

In this paper the importance of elderly housing is investigated. Associations of elderly people regularly express their concern about a shortage of such dwellings. However, houses constructed especially for elderly people are not always easily absorbed by the market. To shed more light on this issue, this paper investigates the role of such dwellings voor the residential satisfaction of elderly people on the basis of WoON 2015, a large sample of Dutch households. In line with Dutch practice, we distinguish dwellings without stairs, dwellings adapted for handicapped people and elderly housing, The analysis is mainly based on ordered logit models. It shows that residential satisfaction of elderly households is high and that the difference with younger groups is completely due to the houses that are especially suitable for elderly people. Despite the low mobility rates of elderly people, a large majority of the oldest old resides in such dwellings. Moreover, the subjective qualification of ‘elderly housing’ that is used in WoON correlates strongly with observable housing characteristics.