Understanding generational housing inequalities beyond tenure, class and context

Abstract

Much of the literature surrounding ‘generation rent’ has been criticized for neglecting socio-economic inequalities, stimulating an emergent body of work addressing intersections between age and class in shaping housing opportunities. Despite this, two key conceptual and empirical gaps remain under-explored: the manifestation of housing outcomes beyond a binary owner-renter tenure framework, and the drivers of inequalities aside from exclusion from homeownership. In addressing these omissions, this paper compares shifts in tenure (restructuring of rental sectors), housing conditions (affordability and precarity), and alternative housing situations (parental co-residence), between income groups in two contexts: Australia and the Netherlands. Findings illuminate increasingly multifaceted housing pressures faced by young adults, remarkable differences between private-renters and occupants of other tenures, and growing socio-economic disparities within the private-rental sector.