Late Home Ownership and Social Restratification

Home ownership was a significant element of social change in the post-war, mature, capitalist economies such as the UK, USA and Japan. This growth of individual home ownership occurred, however, within a particular... [ view full abstract ]

Home ownership was a significant element of social change in the post-war, mature, capitalist economies such as the UK, USA and Japan. This growth of individual home ownership occurred, however, within a particular demographic, economic, social and political context. This distinctive set of conditions include the atomised, nuclear family; suburbanisation; high growth; the conventional mortgage market and a young, working population These conditions have now changed and coalesce in the constitution of what we refer to as ‘late home ownership’. In this era, the housing sphere plays a new and important role in the recasting of social class divisions.

This paper will demonstrate that in the late home ownership era, social restratification is driven particularly by aging demographics, familisation and a new significance of marriage and residential property. In doing so, it will be argued that it is ‘generation own’ (GO) rather than ‘generation rent’ which should be seen as exceptional. It is the accumulation of housing wealth which occurred as many of the GO generation were transformed from mortgaged to outright owners which has been critical in the shaping of the social and economic dynamics of  late home ownership. For example, in the low growth era of late home ownership societies, the deployment of family wealth, rather than income flow, has become more important as a driver of social stratification. Thus, the relationship between generation own and generation rent may be seen as symbiotic rather than oppositional.

The paper conceives of contrasts between ‘real estate families’ or ‘accumulating families’ which maintain or further accumulate valuable multiple property assets over generations; ‘dissipating families’ which experience a dissipation of property assets accumulated in the exceptional era; and ‘perpetually renter families’ with no properties over generations which tend to be excluded from the social mainstream.