Testing Home Ownership as the Cornerstone of Welfare: Lessons from East Asia for the West

Abstract

In recent years, one driver behind the promotion of home ownership in Western countries has been the belief that owner-occupied housing assets provide a means to build up individual welfare security, potentially offsetting pension shortfalls in retirement. In contrast, many developed East Asian societies have both long focussed on advancing ‘asset’ or ‘property-based welfare’ systems as well as experienced the late-1990s Asian Financial Crisis which forced changes in housing and welfare practices. This paper examines how home ownership and asset-based welfare fared in these contexts and the lessons to be learned. It begins by considering the role of owner-occupied housing assets in different welfare regimes before empirically examining how asset-based welfare systems have been realized. It then considers how East Asian home ownership and asset-based welfare systems have stood-up to economic crises. The final section considers what the East Asian experiences contribute to an understanding of the housing assets–welfare relationship.