Young People, Homeownership and Future Welfare

Citation

McKee K (2012) Young People, Homeownership and Future Welfare. Housing Studies, 27 (6), pp. 853-862. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2012.714463

Abstract
Homeownership has become a ‘normalised’ tenure of choice in many advanced economies, with housing playing a pivotal role in shifts from collective to asset-based welfare. Young people are, however, increasingly being excluded from accessing the housing ladder. Many are remaining in the parental home for longer, and even when ready to ‘fly the nest’ face significant challenges in accessing mortgage finance. This under-30 age group has become ‘generation rent’. As this policy review emphasises, this key public-policy issue has created a source of inter-generational conflict between ‘housing poor’ young people and their ‘housing rich’ elders. To fully understand the complexities at play however, this paper argues that we need to look beyond the immediate housing-market issues and consider how housing policy interacts with broader social, economic and demographic shifts, and how it is intimately connected to debates about welfare. This is illustrated with reference to the UK, although these debates have international resonance.

Keywords
young people, housing, generation rent, intra generational inequalities

Notes
Published at previous university and in their repository - St Andrews; date of acceptance email is just a rough guess

Journal
Housing Studies: Volume 27, Issue 6