THE EFFECTS OF DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES ON THE LONG TERM HOUSING DEMAND IN TURKEY

In this paper, we investigate the effects of age structure dynamics of population on housing demand in Turkey. The critical question is how housing demand moves in the environment of positive population growth with declining rate and aging population. We use TurkStat Household Budget Surveys to determine the link between household housing demand and household age cohorts. We obtain housing demand for each age cohorts and long term housing demand for Turkey by utilizing TurkStat population projections. Estimation results indicate that age structure of population has a notable effect on the growth of housing demand besides population growth. The results show housing demand will increase 1.48 percent annually on average from 2009 to 2050 where 1.08 percent of the increase will be contributed by population growth and the rest of 0.40 percent will be derived by the change in age structure of the population.