premise: Traditionally, real estate has represented households' largest asset; while the total value of households' real estate holdings grew by 50 percent over the 1990s, real estate steadily declined as a share of households' total assets from 31 percent in 1990 to 23 percent in 1999.
hypothesis: The 1990s saw an 8% decline in the value of real estate as a share of households' assets. 