Modelling housing career trajectories in Great Britain

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1. AimsThis project aims to develop our understanding of how people's pathways through the housing market are changing in 21st Century Britain.2. BackgroundThe 2017 Housing White Paper noted that many Britons cannot access suitable housing and it committed the government to "fixing our broken housing market". A key problem is that a growing proportion of people are unable to 'progress' along a traditional housing career path by moving into homeownership, more desirable neighbourhoods and accumulating housing wealth as they age. This creates intra- and inter-generational inequalities in wealth holdings and quality of life. Public debates about Generation Rent highlight how demographic change, economic pressure (e.g. low incomes, student debt and job insecurity) and constrained housing affordability have caused young adults' housing position to deteriorate in recent decades. Younger cohorts of adults are finding it harder than previous generations to enter homeownership and 'trade up' to more desirable dwellings and neighbourhoods. This means that social mobility in the housing system is declining as young people's housing attainments become increasingly dependent on whether they have access to family support. At the same time, there is longstanding policy concern that housing wealth is becoming more unevenly distributed across Britain as homeowners in prosperous areas reap gains from house price inflation that are denied to renters and owners in less buoyant places. These disparities could have an adverse impact on population mobility and also destabilise the future funding basis for pensions, welfare and social care.Data constraints mean that there are significant deficiencies in the evidence underpinning these debates. Many studies do not look at inequalities between individuals' housing career development as they rely on data from surveys conducted at one point in time. Furthermore, small samples and the limited wealth measures in most datasets impede knowledge of (i) geographical patterns in housing attainments as well as disparities in (ii) who accumulates housing wealth with age.3. Research designThis study will overcome these issues by examining generational, socioeconomic and spatial disparities in housing careers through interrelated analyses of ESRC supported surveys and consumer Big Data pertaining to almost the entire adult population over a 20-year period. The project will answer the following question: how do patterns of housing career trajectories - defined in terms of (i) dwelling ownership status, (ii) level of neighbourhood (dis)advantage and (iii) housing wealth holdings - vary across birth cohorts, socioeconomic groups and space?Data analysis will be divided into two strands. Strand 1 will use survey data to build detailed models of the housing career progression and wealth trajectories of different population groups since 1998. These results will be fed forward into Strand 2, which will harness Electoral and Consumer Register Big Data pre-prepared at UCL to describe, model and visualize patterns of housing career development across the entire adult population of Great Britain.4. Benefits to societyThis project will deliver several public benefits that align with ESRC's aim to support socially relevant research in the priority field of housing:a. An improved understanding of the origins and nature of housing wealth inequalities. This will inform national and local policy and public debates about housing, property taxation, and how to finance welfare and social care.b. New evidence about 'Generation Rent' and intergenerational/social divisions in housing opportunities. This will inform debates about social mobility and the policy measures needed to promote greater intergenerational fairness. c. A technical assessment of the value and representational challenges of using consumer data for housing research. This will improve the uptake of this research resource.