As high housing costs continue to be top of mind for many Americans, this study uses the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances to examine how family life cycles, demographics, financial literacy, and financial attitudes and behaviors interact with household spending on housing as compared to their income (housing cost burden). Affordability is measured with two different thresholds. First, the study imposes the commonly cited Department of Housing and Urban Development ratio for affordability, which defines affordable housing as less than 30 percent of one’s income. Additionally, housing cost burden is measured by three categories — affordable, high, and excessive. The binary logistic regression and multinomial logistic regression results indicate that renters, single females with and without children, and single males without children were more likely to have an unaffordable housing cost burden when compared to homeowners or married couples without children. Single households typically only have one source of income, and single mothers share many of the same expenses that couples with children have but with potentially fewer resources to fulfill those expenses. The analysis indicates that encouraging homeownership goals, intentional saving behavior, and strong credit management skills may help alleviate this cost burden.

Accepted Oral Presentation