Home ownership and support for government redistribution

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the relationship between home ownership and support for redistribution in 24 European countries, integrating research on housing regimes and welfare attitudes. We improve upon earlier research by taking into account withingroup heterogeneity of owners and tenants, by elaborating on social mechanisms (selfinterest and socio-spatial segregation), by researching a wide range of European (instead of Anglo-Saxon) countries and by recognizing differences in the meaning of tenure and home ownership across countries. We find that, while home owners are less supportive of redistribution, the effect of home ownership varies with age and income position. We furthermore find that housing regime characteristics matter, as owners and tenants have different welfare attitudes in different contexts. In settings where home ownership has become more financialized, support for redistribution is smaller, and more so among home owners. On the other hand, in settings where outright home ownership fills gaps in welfare provision, both owners and tenants prefer more redistribution.

The Socioeconomic, Demographic, and Political Effects of Housing in Comparative Perspective

“…Ansell’s (2014) analysis of panel surveys from the US and UK and cross-sectional data sets from 18 and 29 countries finds that homeowners are support redistribution less when home values increase, presumably because higher home values increase wealth and operate as personal insurance. But André & Dewilde (2014) show that among European countries this association depends on national context. Support for redistribution among homeowners is weakest where homeownership is financialized (meaning home equity can be accessed as income/insurance), and strongest where outright ownership is common but homes are less liquid.…”

“…Cross-national comparative studies are often restricted to Anglo-American and European cases. There is notable variation among these countries in the extent of homeownership, access to mortgages, the degree to which homes are viewed as investments, trends in home prices, and other housing-related variables that researchers have exploited to test ideas about how national setting shapes household- or individual-level housing effects (André & Dewilde 2014, Ansell 2014, Mulder & Billari 2010). However, these countries all are established market economies with longstanding legal traditions protecting property rights.…”

Left‐right Orientation, Homeownership and Class Position in Sweden

“…More recent studies on homeownership and welfare state-related preferences are Ansell (2014;cf. Ansell & Broz 2013) and André and Dewilde (2016). Ansell (2014) argues that asset prices are of increasing importance for the economic circumstances of welfare state citizens.…”

“…He observes that a home is not only a consumption good, but also an asset, and finds that house‐price increases cause homeowners to hold more rightist preferences. André and Dewilde () find a difference in homeowner and tenant preferences for social spending in countries with high degrees of mortgage debt ratios. Concerning the interaction of homeownership and class on political views, Dunleavy () argues that traditionally Labour voting blue‐collar workers will be more likely to vote Conservative if they also own their homes, although the substantive effects of such cross‐pressure remain unclear.…”

Why housing wealth and welfare?

“…Housing market financialization and concomitant gains and losses in housing wealth have been associated with (changes in) social policy preferencesin particular support for government redistribution (Ansell, 2014;André and Dewilde, 2016). During housing booms, right-wing parties have been shown to respond to changes in voter preferences aligned around house wealth by cutting down redistributive spending (Ansell, 2014).…”