Welfare States, Housing Markets and Millennials: Inhibited Transitions into Adulthood

in Ronald, Richard; Arundel, Rowan (Eds.) Families, Housing and Property Wealth in a Neoliberal World (2022)

Why has ‘adulting’ – attaining traditional life-cycle milestones such as exit from the parental home, partnering, and parenting – recently become so hard for the millenniali cohort to attain in high ... [more ▼]

Why has ‘adulting’ – attaining traditional life-cycle milestones such as exit from the parental home, partnering, and parenting – recently become so hard for the millenniali cohort to attain in high-income OECD countries? Changes to housing and housing policy are a central but often neglected component in answering this question. The intensification of privatization, commodification, and financialization of housing in recent decades reflect shifts in welfare states away from policies that enabled previous adult cohorts to meet life-cycle milestones, and towards policies that now undermine contemporary young adults in reaching those milestones. The popular label ‘Generation Rent’, mentioned throughout this book, captures this general trend across higher-income OECD countries. In response, families in various contexts have increasingly mobilized themselves around the accumulation and circulation of housing property as they seek to reach those milestones while protecting themselves from new social and economic uncertainties. Differences in personal and family resources across the millennial generation, however, produce considerable internal heterogeneity within that cohort. Indeed, not all millennials fall into Generation Rent. In this chapter we address the common housing market trends across OECD countries that stem from changes in welfare state polices, arguing that these developments account for much of the difficulties facing the millennial cohort. [less ▲]