Intergenerational Housing Inequalities in Europe

This paper presents early findings from the comparative project “Transformations in Housing and Intergenerational Contracts in Europe (THICE)”. The overarching aim of the project is to deepen the understanding of how housing wealth is reshaping intergenerational relationships in Europe and to explore socially just solutions. Increasing housing inequalities with growing concentrations of wealth among homeowners, especially older ones, and diminishing access to affordable housing, especially among younger adults have affected European societies in recent decades. At the same time, there has been a revival of family dependencies and intergenerational transfers that sustain welfare and life-course transitions for younger generations. Intergenerational support, both financial and in kind, has increasingly centred on housing with, for example, rising adult co-residence with parents and family assistance for people buying their first property. This marks a profound shift in the intergenerational contract.

With the paper presentation we focus on early descriptive findings from Europe. We draw on existing datasets to map intergenerational housing relations across Europe. While we use existing aggregate indicators such as ‘young adults living with their parents’ (e.g. Eurostat), we complement these with new aggregate indicators based on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), Gender and Generations Survey (GGS) and Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). These datasets will provide further insights into issues like the type of housing transferred (e.g. house/apartment), the housing value, the ratio of inheritance and inter vivo housing transfers, etc. The descriptive mapping of these intergenerational housing transfer patterns will be supported with GIS analytics to visualize spatial disparities and distributions.

Overall, our paper will provide a comprehensive overview of intergeneration transfer patterns around housing. These insights will be critically discussed in light the of welfare and housing regime literature and will facilitate further in-depth comparative case studies.