IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/socinc/v8y2020i3p16-27.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Housing Growth Ever Inclusive Growth? Evidence from Three Decades of Housing Development in England and Wales, 1981–2011

Author

Listed:
  • Rebecca Tunstall

    (Centre for Housing Policy, University of York, UK)

Abstract

There is global concern about who gains from economic growth, including housing development, and global interest in making growth more inclusive. This article creates a new definition of ‘housing growth,’ growth in median space per person. It says that this housing growth is ‘inclusive’ if the worst-off make some gains, and ‘just’ if inequality does not increase. It applies these terms to data for 1981–2011 on rooms per person for England and Wales, the bulk of the UK, a nation with high income inequality but lower housing inequality. At national level, median housing space increased but the worst-off gained nothing, and inequality rose, so growth was neither inclusive nor just. Sub-national evidence shows that housing growth benefitted the worst-off in most areas, but they generally made very modest gains, and growth without increasing inequality was very rare. There was housing growth in all 10 regions except London, it was inclusive in 6 regions, but not just in any region. 97% of local authorities experienced housing growth, and it was inclusive in 72%, but the average gain for the worst-off was just 0.2 rooms/person over thirty years. Only 3% of local authorities achieved both inclusive and just growth. This suggests that in the UK and similar nations, local initiatives will be insufficient to achieve growth with significant gains for the worst-off, and that substantial change to the national system of housing development and allocation is needed. There may be a policy choice between benefitting the worst-off and reducing inequality. There is potential for further and comparative research.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca Tunstall, 2020. "Is Housing Growth Ever Inclusive Growth? Evidence from Three Decades of Housing Development in England and Wales, 1981–2011," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 16-27.
  • Handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v8:y:2020:i:3:p:16-27
    DOI: 10.17645/si.v8i3.2789
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/2789
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/si.v8i3.2789?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v8:y:2020:i:3:p:16-27. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.