GINI DP 32: Income Inequality and Access to Housing in Europe

Caroline Dewilde (c.l.dewilde@tilburguniversity.edu) and Bram Lancee (b.lancee@uva.nl)
Additional contact information
Caroline Dewilde: TS Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University
Bram Lancee: Research unit Migration, Integration, Transnationalization, Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), http://www.bramlancee.eu

GINI Discussion Papers from AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies

Abstract: This paper analyses the relation between income inequality and access to housing for low- income households. Three arguments are developed, explaining how inequality might affect housing affordability, quality and quantity. First, it is the absolute level of resources, not their relative distribution, which affects access to housing. Second, inequality affects access to housing in different ways, due to rising aspirations and status competition. Third, the effect of inequality is mediated by housing market pressures. Multilevel-models for 28 countries indicate that: 1) there is no relation between inequality and housing affordability – the level of resources matters, rather than their distribution; 2) there exists a positive relation between inequality and crowding for owners; 3) higher levels of income inequality are associated with lower housing quality for owners and renters. Although there is a relation between inequality and access to housing, it is complex and not mediated by our indicator of house price-changes. Key words: Income inequality, low incomes, housing conditions, comparative research, Europe.

Date: 2012-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www1.feb.uva.nl/aias/DP32-Dewilde,Lancee.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www1.feb.uva.nl:443 (No such host is known. )

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:aia:ginidp:32

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GINI Discussion Papers from AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiemer Salverda (w.salverda@uva.nl this e-mail address is bad, please contact repec@repec.org).