The impact of homeownership on political beliefs

Abstract

The view that homeownership leads to conservative social and political attitudes is widely held by contemporary social theorists across a wide political spectrum. Oddly, little empirical research has been conducted to assess the overall impact of homeownership on political attitudes. Confirmatory factor analysis which broke down political attitudes into six dimensions measuring civil liberties, women’s rights, sexual tolerance, domestic spending, inner-city problems, and socialism along with two additional variables measuring voting behavior showed no direct statistically significant impact on six of the eight dependent variables. A strong positive relationship was found between owning a home and voting. Given these results, the traditional theoretical proposition of a relationship between homeownership and a conservative political ideology needs to be reexamined. © 1995 The University of North Carolina Press.