An Investigation of Overcrowding Among the UK Households

Abstract

Despite being a major economic power, UK has been facing several social issues especially with respect to the housing of the population. The UK law on housing defines the minimum standards of the housing structure and the number of people occupying a given housing space. Despite these legal requirements, the census data of housing shows that there is a steady increase in the providing adequate housing for the population and that the overcrowding in UK dwellings is a very common problem. This paper tries to identify the various factors that determine the overcrowding in UK housing market. We find that the overcrowding in UK housing market indicted by ‘the total number of bedrooms households actually has’ is significantly related to the joint income of the household personals and tenure type, whereas age under sixteen and rurality are not significant. We use Linear probability (regression) model for discrete dependent variables with multiple responses to test the hypothesis and also provide robust estimations.