and Drew and Herbert (2013). Employment status, whether full-time or part-time as compared to being unemployed, cannot account for differences in opinion on the financial benefits of homeownership. The same is true for racial variables given by White and African-American race indicators. So, individuals have similar views on homeownership as an investment irrespective of employ- ment status or race, conditional on other variables in the model. During the housing crisis decline in house prices varied tremendously across geographic regions. West and South re- gions experienced the largest decline in house prices. Hence, we include indicator variables for geographic regions to capture differences in opinion due to residing in different regions. The results from the lower quantiles suggest that individuals living in the West, relative to Midwest, are more likely to strongly agree on the financial benefits of homeownership. This is interesting and reassuring that people living in the West despite being the hardest hit continue to have faith in homeownership. Undoubtedly, the housing meltdown and the eco- nomic crisis caused serious financial distress to a large number of individuals in the US. This may have altered their views on homeownership. To capture the effect of financial distress on homeownership views, we include indicator variables for post recession financial situation. The results show that individuals who are financially worse-off post the Great Recession, relative to those who are better-off, are less probable to strongly agree that homeownership is the best long-term investment. Hence, our results provide evidence that financial hard- ship endured during the Great Recession negatively impacted public views on the investment benefits of homeownership. Table 7: Change in predicted probabilities of the responses: somewhat or strongly disagree ( y = 1), somewhat agree ( y = 2) and strongly agree ( y = 3) that homeownership is the best long-term investment. 24 female post-bachelors finc-worse 25th 50th 75th 25th 50th 75th 25th 50th 75th ΔP(y=1) − 0 . 0630 − 0 . 0553 − 0 . 0504 0 . 0962 0 . 0900 0 . 0852 0 . 0452 0 . 0429 0 . 0404 ΔP(y=2) 0 . 0322 0 . 0405 0 . 0467 0 . 0174 0 . 0282 0 . 0473 0 . 0219 0 . 0302 0 . 0360 ΔP(y=3) 0 . 0952 0 . 0958 0 . 0970 − 0 . 1136 − 0 . 1182 − 0 . 1325 − 0 . 0671 − 0 . 0731 − 0 . 0764