Understanding after-housing disposable income effects on rising inequality

Ilan Wiesel, Liss Ralston and Wendy Stone

Housing Studies, 2023, vol. 38, issue 2, 290-306

Abstract: Wealth and income inequalities are rising globally since the 1970s, with detrimental social, economic and environmental effects. The contribution of housing costs to rising inequality is not well understood. In this paper we examine the intersection of tenure, income, generation and geographical factors compounding after-housing income inequality to understand how housing costs impacted on rising economic inequality in Australia since 1993. Analysing data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Household Expenditure Surveys conducted in 1993–4 and 2017–8, the paper shows that rising housing costs disproportionally curtailed real gains from income growth for lower-income households, exacerbating inequality. Between 1993–4 and 2017–8, the incomes of the top 10% of earners rose at a rate twice as high as the bottom 10% of earners in before-housing income, or three times as high after deducting housing costs. The paper examines how this overarching trend was shaped by the intersection of socioeconomic, generational, tenure and geographical factors.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02673037.2021.1882661 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:chosxx:v:38:y:2023:i:2:p:290-306

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/chos20

DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2021.1882661

Access Statistics for this article

Housing Studies is currently edited by Chris Leishman, Moira Munro, Ray Forrest, Alex Schwartz, Hal Pawson and John Flint

More articles in Housing Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().