Housing Wealth, Asset Based Welfare and Inequality

For many decades, owner occupation in Australia was an integral part of the ‘workers welfare state’ with relative equality in household wealth as well as incomes. From the mid-1980s, new patterns of wealth accumulation... [ view full abstract ]

For many decades, owner occupation in Australia was an integral part of the ‘workers welfare state’ with relative equality in household wealth as well as incomes. From the mid-1980s, new patterns of wealth accumulation have developed based on residential property and individual retirement accounts. The results have been new types of inequalities: household wealth inequality far exceeds income inequality, many younger people are locked out of the housing market with little opportunity to accumulate wealth as their parents and grandparents did; and there are clear spatial inequalities in household wealth between and within cities due to increased housing price differentials. In the late welfare state, tax concessions and occupational welfare trump social expenditures and families engage in self-provisioning strategies to build, retain and transfer housing and other wealth.