Australia’s COVID-19 pandemic housing policy responses

This research reviewed Australia’s COVID-19 housing policy responses to better understand their intervention approach, underlying logic, short and long term goals, target groups and level of success. It considered literature and policy from Australia and a small number of international comparator policies; conducted online surveys of landlords and of economists; and consulted key stake holders. Given Australia’s federated system of government, considerable differences quickly emerged between intervention approaches across states and territories. This was also driven by the extent to which different jurisdictions were impacted by the spread of the virus, the extent and frequency of lockdowns, and damage to state/local economies. The national and state policy measures implemented to support home ownership achieved the desired goal of providing short-term stimulus to the residential building sector and support to the broader economy. However, a range of anticipated and unforeseen consequences have precipitated as a result of concentrated demand-side subsidies, low interest rates and flexible lending conditions. The establishment of an agile infrastructure to support information sharing will support more effective and innovative housing policy development in the future. The state-to-state infrastructure and approaches that were developed rapidly and which supported jurisdictional responses to COVID-19 provide a template for a shelf-ready policy-sharing practice that warrants supported development across governments. This could usefully include local government as well as state and territory and national tiers of governance

The Growing Intergenerational Housing Wealth Divide: Drivers And Interactions In Australia

This paper unpacks the drivers of growing intergenerational housing wealth inequality in Australia. We also account for the multidimensional nature of housing wealth divides by examining the interaction between age and other divides. We find that the Australian intergenerational housing wealth gap widened from 161% in 1997–98 to 234% in 2017–18, favouring the older cohort. This was driven by lower rates of homeownership and lower property value growth among younger cohorts, with the relative lack of homeownership access the more significant driver. However, higher rates of couple formation and tertiary education amongst the young mitigated a further widening of the gap. The intergenerational housing wealth gap is exacerbated within specific population subgroups. The growing housing wealth gap between the income-poor young and income-rich old has been particularly alarming, climbing from 532% to 1230% over two decades. We discuss implications for policies seeking to alleviate intergenerational tensions in housing markets

Personality traits, risk aversion and endowment effects on residential mobility outcomes

The psychology literature offers substantial evidence suggesting that personality traits are associated with different residential mobility patterns. Our study extends this previous work by examining whether the effects of personality traits on mobility are attenuated by risk aversion and endowment effects. We also investigate whether personality traits exert an indirect influence on mobility through risk aversion and endowment effects. We draw on data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey over the period 2014–2018. We find that openness and extraversion have positive associations with residential mobility, but risk aversion and endowment effects reduce the likelihood of moving. Moreover, risk aversion and endowment effects act as mediators through which openness and extraversion exert an indirect influence on residential mobility. These mediators account for 35 % and 30 % of the total effect on mobility exerted by openness and extraversion respectively. The types of individual differences that matter for residential mobility also vary by sex and age, reflecting the influence of life course contexts on residential mobility outcomes

Place Attachment and Aging in Place: Preferences and Disruptions

This paper examines the links between place attachment and older persons’ preferences to age in place, and factors that disrupt these preferences. We use data from the 2001–2021 Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey and panel-data modelling to confirm strong associations between several place attachment dimensions and aging-in-place preferences. Strong ties to children, strong social capital, residence in social housing, homeownership status, housing wealth, and home and neighborhood satisfaction are all positively linked to a stronger preference to age in place. Our findings reveal important differences between older homeowners and older non-owners. For owners, closeness to children is a strong predictor of aging-in-place preferences, although mortgage debt can trigger involuntary moves. For non-owners, tenure security achieved through longer durations at one’s address of residence is linked to stronger aging-in-place preferences. However, private renters are more often exposed to involuntary moves. We discuss the policy implications of these disruptions

Geographic Reference Income and the Subjective Wellbeing of Australians

In this paper panel data is used to estimate the relationship between geographic reference income and subjective wellbeing in Australia. Recent cross-sectional US-based studies suggest that the income of other people in a neighbourhood—geographic reference income—impacts on individual wellbeing but is mediated by geographic scale. On controlling for a household’s own income, subjective wellbeing is raised by neighbourhood income and lowered by region-wide income. However, these findings could be driven by the self-selection of innately happy or unhappy individuals into higher-income areas. This study’s methodology takes advantage of panel-data modelling to show that unobserved individual heterogeneity is in fact correlated with reference income, but on curbing its impacts through the inclusion of fixed-effects we find that there is still a positive relationship between reference income and subjective wellbeing at the neighbourhood level. However, we detect no relationship at the region-wide level. Additionally, the subjective wellbeing relationship is the same no matter an individual’s rank in the distribution of incomes within an area. The neighbourhood wellbeing relationship has implications for policies addressing residential segregation and social mixing

Pathways to housing tax reform

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