Harvard’s Edward Glaser says people are just as well off saving actual money versus investing in homes in order to build up long-term wealth.
Unless we’re reading the op-ed wrong, he says stats show that housing prices in the Boston area have increased by only about one-tenth of 1 percent per year over the past 22 years — not as much as people may think. He may be right. But it doesn’t strike us as a gut-instinct reflection of home price increases here in recent decades.
Does anyone have an explanation for the discrepancy between Glaser’s stats and our gut instinct? He left out most of the Massachusetts Miracle years of the ’80s. Should those years count? Is it a definitional difference? What?
File under: Lies, damned lies and statistics?
