Changing Inequalities in Housing Outcomes across Western Europe

Housing Inequality and Social Class in Europe

“…A qualitative description of European housing regimes and their transformations in recent decades has been provided by many authors. Norris and Shiels (2007), compare the degree of housing inequality taking into account housing quality, accessibility and affordability over the last few decades, identifying three great country clusters (Northern/Central, Southern and Eastern Europe) More recently Dewilde and De Decker (2014), propose a (somehow shuffled) four clusters typology (see below for details) according to the shared idea (see also Schwartz, Seabrooke, 2008, 2009Borg, 2013) that we need to break up the black box of housing tenure through the forms and rules of managing the increase of ownership and the residualization of rental systems. The idea is that differences between European housing regimes can be understood, looking at the levels and forms of state intervention versus the role of the market and the family.…”

“…This phenomenon, pointing at social inequality and a risk of poverty is seemingly in contradiction with the extension of home ownership and the spread of a high standard of living. This contradiction is quite illusory because there is a widely confirmed relationship between access to ownership, housing costs and low income (Dewilde, Lancee, 2013;Dewilde, De Decker, 2014). Though around three quarters of Europe's citizens are home owners, the costs of accessing and maintaining a home have continued to rise and cannot only jeopardize housing security and quality, but can also stand in the way of life projects (Palvarini, Pavilion, 2010;Filandri, Olagnero, 2014).…”

Why housing wealth and welfare?

“…Although the vulnerable are often housed in other tenures, they have not remained immune from the financialization of housing and its impact on welfare regimes and housing market dynamics (for example, Dewilde and De Decker, 2016). The increased policy focus on, and use of, housing as an investment asset has compromised access to decent and affordable housing through processes such as privatization of the public housing stock; new urban strategies aimed at enabling the mobilization and circulation of global capital, such as institutional investment in private rental housing (for example, Fields and Uffer, 2016); welfare cuts and austerity measures (for example, Kennett et al, 2013) and greater spatial segregation and concentration of wealth (for example, Walks, 2016).…”

Estimating Classification Errors Under Edit Restrictions in Composite Survey-Register Data Using Multiple Imputation Latent Class Modelling (MILC)

“…It has been related to a number of properties, such as inequality (Dewilde and Decker 2016), employment insecurity (Lersch and Dewilde 2015) and government redistribution (André and Dewilde 2016). Therefore, we apply the MILC method on a composite data set that brings together survey data from the LISS (Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social sciences) panel from 2013 (Scherpenzeel 2011), which is administered by CentERdata (Tilburg University, The Netherlands) and a population register from Statistics Netherlands from 2013.…”