摘要：

A recent report surveyed 200 cities worldwide and showed that a staggering 90 percent are considered unaffordable for residents. Home ownership is pivotal for wealth accumulation, social mobility, and individual and societal well-being. Especially in societies with low fertility rates, excessive housing prices might discourage couples from starting families due to financial concerns and space constraints. This study investigates how a mortgage deduction scheme that aims to assist younger demographics in establishing households affects mortgage burden, housing purchase decisions, and fertility using household survey data. Moreover, we examine the scheme’s implications in an aging society, a novel aspect absent from the literature. Exploiting a unique feature of preferential mortgage rates for specific groups and using a difference-in-differences strategy with matching, we find that the scheme produces an economic reduction of 7.9 percent in mortgage burden. The effect is larger in areas excluding the cities with the most expensive housing, resulting in an economic magnitude of a 17.6 percent reduction in household mortgage interest burden. However, it has no effect on the probability of home purchase or fertility, indicating that the cost savings provided by the policy did not offer a strong incentive.