Emerging Patterns of Intergenerational Inequality in the Housing Market: The Shifting Position of Younger People in Cities in Europe and East Asia

Across the developed world, market forms of housing provision and consumption were increasingly promoted towards the end of the last century. While state intervention and de-regulation combined in diverse ways in different contexts, the assumption pervaded that increasing numbers of new households would move into owner-occupied housing, stimulating urban economies and restructuring housing sectors around more marketized and privatized practices. This was expected to make urban housing markets more efficient and reduce the necessity for subsidized rental sectors. In context of the global housing boom and the Global Financial Crisis that followed, however, transformations in urban housing sectors have had a number of unexpected corollaries. One that has become particular prominent in some cities is the divide between younger and older cohorts in terms of access to, and movement through housing markets. Timing of independent household formation and entry in the housing market, as well as access to wider family housing resources, have become increasingly important in shaping patterns of inequality both across and between different cohorts of urban residents. In this paper we explore intergenerational inequalities in a number of European and East Asian city contexts, with a focus on how housing market structures are reshaping housing careers, family formation and socioeconomic conditions among younger adults. The purpose of the East-West axis of analysis is to illustrate different manifestations of housing sector neo-liberalization as well as the more or less common outcomes in terms of spatial and economic polarization within and across different generations.