The dramatic rise in the U.S. home ownership rate from 64% in 1996 to almost 70% in 2005 has prompted increased attention to the relation between home ownership and demographic characteristics of households. The recent rise and sharp decline of subprime lending will likely spur further interest...

In this paper I demonstrate, both theoretically and empirically, that the interpretation of regression estimates of between-group differences in economic outcomes depends on the relative sizes of subpopulations under study. When the disadvantaged group is small, regression estimates are similar...