The Evolution of Home Ownership

Forty-three percent of housholds aged 20-34 already own a home. Nationally about 70 percent of households now own a home. A return to normal lending practices and higher interest rates should lead to stagnation in housing.

The numbers indicate that housing is a long term problem for the economy. The long term chart indicates that homes are over owned and that the market is saturated. Demogrpahics already in place favor downsizing (retirement) and shrinkage in the pool of available new buyers. Numbers indicate a long term, possibly a decade, hangover in the housing market. This is much longer then anything now being anticipated in the market place.

It is likely that we will see significant mark downs in prices in the years ahead in the formerly hot areas like New York, California, and Florida. This will be necessary as supply continues to outstrip demand.

More details on next page.


Get the detailed paper from the Atlanta Fed

Source Atlanta Fed: Mortgage Innovation Boosted Home Ownership

After holding steady for three decades, the share of U.S. households owning their own home jumped from 64% in 1994 to 69% in 2005. The primary cause, argues a new staff study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, was the introduction of new mortgage products that reduced the initial down payment needed by a home buyer.

The paper, by Matthew Chambers, Carlos Garriga, and Don E. Schlagenhauf, examines changes in home ownership by age cohort. The U.S. population aged in the last decade, boosting the share of the population in age cohorts that are more likely to own a home. But the authors conclude this explains just 16% to 31% of the rise in total home ownership. The introduction of new mortgage products, in particular those that allowed little or no down payment, accounts for 56% to 70% of the increase. Such “loans tend to be the contract of choice for younger cohorts which explains an important part of the increase in the aggregate homeownership rate observed since 1994,” they say. Indeed, while the homeownership rate rose for all age groups in that period, it rose most for households under age 35: it jumped to 43% from 37.3%

A New Tool for Diagnosing Alzheimer's Magnetoencephalography (MEG)

This development has wonderful implications for diagnosing Alzheimer's; it has far reaching implications for those predisposed by genetics to Alzheimer's disease.

You will be hearing this word quite a bit in the coming months, Magnetoencephalography (MEG). If you read our previous post you will understand why this is likely. Researchers from the University of Minnesota Medical School and Brain Sciences Center at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center recently identified a way to diagnose Alzheimer's and other brain diseases. I am often asked what I am doing for myself now that my mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The answer to this question is quite long and detailed. I will answers this question when I can on my companion blog, I am an Alzheimer’s CareGiver. For now, I will be investigating the use and potential for Magnetoencephalography as a tool in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease. As I learn more I will be posting that information on this blog.

For now I can tell you this, the procedure is very expensive and is out of reach financially for the majority of us who are genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s. Perhaps in the future there will good medical reasons for insurance companies to catch the disease early and treat it. When this occurs the test will become more readily available for those with insurance and likely cheaper for those without that benefit. We can only hope and pay attention to developments

Source Brain Sciences Center, University of Minnesota

Applications

MEG provides scientists a vital neuroimaging tool to gain critical perspectives into the basic mechanisms of the cognitive processes of the healthy, functioning brain in the same lightning speed at which the brain itself operates.

MEG studies also allow researchers valuable insights into the dysfunctional brain with respect to neurological disorders and diseases such as: schizophrenia, stroke, mental retardation, dyslexia and Alzheimer’s disease through measuring these changes in the brain’s electro-magnetic fields.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a rare, complex neuroimaging technique that allows scientists a unique view of the dynamic, interactive brain. There are only a few research centers in the world that have the expertise and capital to incorporate this advanced level of technology into their brain studies.

The uniquely powerful MEG machine at the Brain Science Center uses a non-invasive, whole-head, 248 channel, super-conducting-quantum-interference-device (SQUID) to measure small magnetic signals reflecting changes in the electrical signals in the human brain. The incorporation of liquid helium creates the incredibly-cold conditions (4.2 kelvin) necessary for the MEG’s SQUIDs to be able to measure fields that are literally billions of times weaker than the background magnetic field of the earth.

Investigators at the Center use the MEG to measure these magnetic changes in the active, functioning brain in the speed of milliseconds. Used in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to relate the MEG sources to brain structures, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), for optimal spatial resolution, researchers can now localize brain activity and measure it in the same temporal dimension as the functioning brain itself. This allows investigators to measure, in real-time, the integration and activity of neuronal populations while either working on a task, or at rest. The brains of healthy subjects and those suffering from dysfunction or disease are imaged and analyzed in these MEG studies.

History

This ever-evolving technology began as a single-channel system in the 1970s. Since then, MEG technology has been constantly updated and refined into its current state-of-the-art status. The MEG instrument at the Brain Sciences Center, is one of the few of its caliber in existence. Its 248 SQUID sensors make this imaging machine one of the most powerful and technologically advanced in the world.

What is the Brain Sciences Center?

The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease and Memory Loss in Later Life