Housing and the Crisis: Changing Housing Positions of Younger Households in Europe?

Over the past several decades, advanced economies have seen a dramatic shift towards homeownership. Alongside a shift in preferences, government policy in many countries has heavily promoted homeownership. With housing property being the most important source of individual wealth and in the face of diminishing state support, homeownership is seen as key towards securing future household welfare. Nonetheless, housing wealth and access to home purchase remains uneven. A rollback in certain homeownership subsidies, continued relatively high prices, restricted credit access, unstable labour markets, and changed career and education paths have all contributed to difficulties in accessing homeownership, especially among younger people. The financial crisis of the late 2000s has only exacerbated these trends. Using cross-national datasets, the research looks at the situation of homeownership access for younger people across Europe before and after the crisis and evaluates how these changes have potentially contributed or exacerbated intra and inter-generational inequalities. The study examines variations across countries and attempts to understand these differences with regards to varied macro social and economic experiences of the financial crisis.