Abstract
Forrest and Yip’s recent publication offers research focusing on cross-cultural housing, especially the transition of young people from their family homes to independent household formation, a topic largely ignored in academia, especially within housing circles. This book explores several countries on different continents, including Asia, Europe, and Australia. The countries featured are (in order by chapter) Greece, Italy, Australia, Taiwan, Sweden, Hong Kong, China, Japan, France, Ireland, and Russia. The book’s primary focus is on the mainstream youth population, but less on young people at the economic margins. Each of the contributors discuss their home countries’ policy shifts, along with their concomitant effects on young adults. Whereas the issue of housing affordability and its effect on young adults has been elaborated in previous research, this book discusses attempts to provide access to housing for those who form households or who buy a home for the first time and the difficulties involved in doing so. Many contributors of this book argue that young people are worth observing from a research standpoint, given the power of this group to drive housing supply and design changes over time. As a result, the diffusion of housing innovations both large and small, such as “green” housing, could lag given the increase in the percentage of young people either living at home or settling in lower-quality housing.
Each of the twelve chapters provides country-specific discussions of the consequences that demographic and economic shifts have had in influencing the housing trajectory among young people when compared with their cohort from a few decades earlier. The contributors discuss many contributing factors in young people’s housing decisions, such as housing cost increases, low incomes, job instability, shifts from permanent work to temporary contract and informal work positions, as well as unemployment. Many of these economic realities tend to clash with long-standing cultural influences that had shaped housing decisions for this age group in prior generations. In several countries, the effects of the global financial crisis have resulted in social externalities that may have long-term consequences such as an increase in multigenerational households, delayed marriage patterns, decreased fertility, a decrease in the rate of household formation, and an ultimate decrease in the worker-to-nonworker ratio paying into social security. Thus, many young professionals may experience a decrease in the level of quality of life when compared to their parents. Meanwhile, some economic shifts have occurred from within the housing industry itself, creating barriers to entry for young adults and families in the process. Many of the younger generation are also facing hurdles in attaining homeownership, for example, higher down payment requirements and increased credit scores, which may be particularly unattainable to many young borrowers, as discussed in the chapter authored by Norris and Winston on Ireland (chapter 11).
Many of the chapters provide interesting contrasts of young people as they move along their housing careers, with a specific emphasis on family influences. For example, in chapter 2, Emmanuel introduces the sharp divide between the Northern and Southern European housing careers. Whereas the Northern European countries have a high proportion of single-headed households, the Southern European countries have a large proportion of multifamily households because of the high degree of familism. As a result, young adults in Southern Europe tend to coreside with their parents longer than their counterparts in Northern European countries.
The featured Asian countries provide some similarities and contrasts. Many young adults in Taiwan, as discussed in chapter 5 by Li, prefer to live in a multigenerational household, influenced by the allure of access to parental resources rather than an affinity toward traditional East Asian culture. Similar to Taiwan, young adults in Hong Kong and China, discussed in chapter 7 by Yip and in chapter 8 by Zhu, are culturally bound to live with their parents until marriage, despite cramped living conditions. In the case of Hong Kong, once young adults form their own households and become homeowners, they often participate in shared equity programs as a way of gaining access to pricey real estate that might otherwise be out of reach for them. Independent living is not common, and young people are typically expected to make contributions to the household in shared living situations.
Consistently across all the chapters, many young adults are remaining at home for significantly longer periods of time or taking alternative approaches to independent living. For example, as Lieberg discusses in chapter 6, many young adults in Sweden are so-called boomerang kids who leave their parents’ homes, form independent households, and then move back in with their parents. Similarly, in Bugeja-Bloch’s chapter on French young adults (chapter 10), many young people leave their parental home, yet do not achieve residential independence, as parents continue to help paying their rent. In chapter 3, Poggio discusses Italian households, which transfer housing wealth in an intergenerational fashion through inheritance by sons (rather than daughters), providing free housing for many young adults who are getting married and establishing their independent households. In contrast, intergenerational housing transitions are almost nonexistent in Australia, as discussed in chapter 4 by Beer and Faulkner.
As discussed in several chapters, some governments have originated policies to address some of the concerns young adults face when forming households and becoming homeowners. For example, in chapter 12, Zavisca discusses how the Russian government, assisted by US consultants, adopted pro-capitalist policies toward private ownership and securitized mortgage finance markets that have resulted in a rocky transformation process for units previously owned and managed by the public sector and now sold on the private market. Part of the difficult transition was due to the cultural differences between the United States and Russia, which caused many people to interpret a mortgage as “debt bondage” (230). As Lieberg shows in chapter 6, the proportion of young Swedes who are homeless, live in unstable housing conditions, or live in multigenerational households is small, thanks to a generous welfare and support system that includes a nationwide network of housing subsidies. In chapter 8, Zhu discusses how China has undergone significant housing reforms and privatization measures, although none has specifically targeted young adults. In chapter 4, Beer and Faulkner show that in the case of Australia, there has been a discontinuation of homeownership assistance for young adults, resulting in some borrowers paying as much as 50 percent of their income toward housing, which would be unthinkable in the United States. In the case of Ireland (chapter 11), Norris and Winston note that a decline in the availability of social housing has hit young people particularly hard.
The content of Young People and Housing: Transitions, Trajectories, and Generational Fractures is pithy and a welcome addition to the scant housing literature that focuses on the younger generation’s household formation and homeownership. The book probably suffers from a lack of geographic cohesion and flow. The editors do not provide a rationale for the order of the chapters in the introduction although they notably attempt to categorize the chapters within sections according to three major categories: (a) family and demographic shifts, (b) housing affordability, and (c) economic change and generational fractures. Also, the editors could have discussed the United States, Canada, the Middle East, and South Africa to enrich the discussion; however, those countries were curiously not included.
However, this categorization appears to be somewhat unnecessary since all of the chapters seem to address each of these three elements. Still, as Lieberg states in chapter 6, the issue of “young people remaining at home and leaving home is a special area of research” (119) and is a topic that warrants further research in the future, an assertion with which I heartily agree. This book would be a welcome addition to those specializing in housing demographics and family policy, particularly those conducting cross-cultural research.