Thanks to Jim Smith for an excellent seminar today on house price volatility and downsizing. It got me thinking again about why there is such a culture of home-ownership in the States, but less so in some European countries.
There are some suggestions as to why home-ownership is popular in America in an interesting article today's Forbes: Don't Buy That House. The article also says there are claims that homeowners vote more, join more voluntary associations, take better care of their residences and have better-educated kids.
However, the buid-up of this kind of social capital is also evident in European countries where renting is the norm. The article says: "Certainly there are plenty of stable, wealthy, well-educated places in Europe, at least, where homeownership is far rarer than it is in the U.S. Nearly 70% of all Americans own their own homes; only 34% of the Swiss do. Thriving cities like Hamburg, Amsterdam and Berlin have rates of ownership of just 20%, 16% and 11% respectively, according to the United Nations".
And the article also suggests that it isn't ownership that is driving the build-up of social capital, but rather mobility, in the sense that less mobile households create more stable families:
"Some research has suggested that it isn't whether parents own or rent, but the mobility of the household," says Rachel Drew, a research analyst at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. In other words, it's likely that families who stay in one place for a long time (renting or buying) are doing better by their kids than families that move often.
There are some suggestions as to why home-ownership is popular in America in an interesting article today's Forbes: Don't Buy That House. The article also says there are claims that homeowners vote more, join more voluntary associations, take better care of their residences and have better-educated kids.
However, the buid-up of this kind of social capital is also evident in European countries where renting is the norm. The article says: "Certainly there are plenty of stable, wealthy, well-educated places in Europe, at least, where homeownership is far rarer than it is in the U.S. Nearly 70% of all Americans own their own homes; only 34% of the Swiss do. Thriving cities like Hamburg, Amsterdam and Berlin have rates of ownership of just 20%, 16% and 11% respectively, according to the United Nations".
And the article also suggests that it isn't ownership that is driving the build-up of social capital, but rather mobility, in the sense that less mobile households create more stable families:
"Some research has suggested that it isn't whether parents own or rent, but the mobility of the household," says Rachel Drew, a research analyst at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. In other words, it's likely that families who stay in one place for a long time (renting or buying) are doing better by their kids than families that move often.
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