Trends in relative and absolute mobility of homeownership in Europe

• In Event: Social Mobility

Abstract

Homeownership has declined markedly among younger generations across Europe. Acommon assumption is that this decline is increasingly stratified by parental homeownership,due to rising house prices and the growing importance of parental financial support. We showthat this assumption does not hold for the average European. Using data from EU-SILC 2011and 2019 covering 24 European countries, we examine trends in relative and absolutemobility of homeownership for birth cohorts 1951 to 1984. On average, both relative andabsolute mobility remain largely stable across cohorts. However, this apparent stability masksa deeper structural cohort shift: downward mobility increased from 14% to 36%, whileupward mobility declined from 25% to 11% between cohorts born in the 1950s and 1980s.Therefore, homeownership has declined for both children of homeowners and renters. We alsocompare absolute and relative mobility trends across countries and show that they oftendiverge for two reasons. First, a mechanical effect of the origin distribution: in countries withwidespread parental homeownership, relative mobility largely reflect changes in upwardmobility. Second, the source of mobility: using two counterfactual simulations, we show thatobserved absolute mobility changes mainly stem from structural shifts in homeownershipchances across generations, rather than changes in parent-child associations.

Authors

• Selçuk Bedük, University of Oxford

• Enrico Benassi, University of Oxford

• Philipp Lersch, Humboldt-University of Berlin