Housing affordability: a global problem within a local context

Author: Tom Coupe, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Housing affordability is an issue that concerns people all over the world.

In my recent paper published in the International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, I use Gallup World Poll survey data from more than 140 countries to analyse who is concerned with housing affordability and how concerns have evolved between 2006/8 and 2015/17.

The Gallup World Poll is a great survey to analyse housing affordability as it asks survey respondents two relevant questions: whether they have trouble paying for adequate housing and whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the availability of good affordable housing.

Survey respondents’ answers clearly show that concerns with housing affordability are a ‘global’ issue. In about 90% of the surveyed countries, at least a quarter of the population is dissatisfied with the availability of good affordable housing. Similarly, in 75% of the countries surveyed, at least 10% of the population indicated they had trouble paying for adequate housing.

At the same time, there is also lots of evidence that local contexts vary a lot. In the period 2015-2017, only about 6% of the population of Thailand was dissatisfied with the availability of affordable housing, while about 80% of the population of Algeria was dissatisfied with the availability of affordable housing. Similarly, the share of people lacking money for housing, ranged from Australia with about 3% to the Central African Republic with about 67%.  Moreover, these two measures of housing affordability do not always point in the same direction. In New Zealand, few indicate they have trouble paying for adequate housing but over half are dissatisfied with the availability of good affordable housing. In Cambodia, the opposite is true: the majority of respondents indicate they have trouble paying for adequate housing but only about 20% are dissatisfied with the availability of good affordable housing in their area. So local context has an important impact on how people perceive housing affordability.

This becomes even more clear when one analyses who is concerned about housing affordability. Not surprisingly, in the vast majority of countries, richer people are less likely to be dissatisfied with the availability of quality housing. Other socio-economic characteristics, however, are less predictive: in some countries, older survey respondents are more likely to be dissatisfied, while in other countries it is the younger survey respondents. And in many countries, age does not seem to matter. Similarly, in some countries, gender does not matter, while in other countries, male respondents are more likely to be dissatisfied than female respondents are, or vice versa.

The data further show that housing affordability is not a new phenomenon. The share of people who are dissatisfied with the availability of good, affordable housing remained stable between the period 2006/2008 and the period 2015/2017. Moreover, globally survey respondents are about equally dissatisfied with the roads and highways and only slightly less dissatisfied with the availability of quality healthcare.

Summarising, housing affordability is a global and lasting problem – but also it is just one of the many problems people face. Moreover, local context considerably affects those most affected by the lack of affordable housing and the perception of what affordable housing is. Thus, policies aimed at making housing more affordable better be well aware of the local context.

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