How To Examine Spatial Housing Inequality and Housing Polarization?

To alleviate housing problems including issues of inequality, disparity, and polarization, we need to determine exactly their present status, characteristics, and influencing factors. Hence, this research developed a spatial housing inequality index that consisted of housing wealth inequality (HWI) and housing affordability inequality (HAI); examined factors of spatial housing inequality through a multiple discriminant analysis model using statistics data from 2008 to 2012; and suggested a housing polarization index that consisted of housing wealth polarization (HWP) and housing affordability polarization (HAP). The first finding is that inequality, disparity, and polarization of housing in Korea are distinctly different aspects. Therefore, examining housing problems requires each index or method in terms of spatial base, wealth, and affordability, such as HWI, HAI, HWP, HAP, etc. The second is that comparing patterns of PIR and the Gini coefficient, affordable housing and affordability of householder are more important subjects in Korea than the level of housing wealth, in view of inequality. The third thing is that the spatial concentration of HWI and HAI shows opposite result to each other. In HWI, only Seoul and Gyeonggi are below the total level, while in HAI, all regions except Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi are below the total level. The fourth finding is that common key factors of largest gap in spatial housing inequality are inflation rate, housing price, unemployment rate, in descending order, and unlike HWI, HAI is affected relatively by unsold housing of region, the number of houses, per capita GRDP. Final finding is that polarization in housing affordability is more serious than that of housing wealth in Korea. The primary cause of the disparity in HWP is MB (middle-bottom) section, and it in HAP is TM (top-middle) section.