Housing Wealth and Welfare

Both growth and unevenness in the distribution of housing wealth have become characteristic of advanced societies in recent decades. This book examines, in various contexts, how central housing property ownership has become to household well-being as well as in reshaping social, economic and political relations.Expert contributors analyze the critical interactions between housing and wealth that lie at the heart of contemporary forms of capitalism, especially its global, neoliberal incarnation. Comparing and contrasting case studies from across the European continent, this book illustrates how these interactions are reshaping the function of housing as a welfare object, including how the financialisation and commodification of housing in the twenty-first-century has transformed its role and amplified distributional outcomes. Practical and engaging, Housing Wealth and Welfare is a must-read for researchers and students of housing studies, social policy, sociology, social geography and political science. It will also appeal to policy makers within national and supra-national organisations and institutions such as the European Union, Housing Europe and the International Monetary Fund.Contributors include: B. Bengtsson, S. Buchholz, C. Dewilde, J. Doling, T.P. Gerber, K. Kolb, S. Koppe, C. Lennartz, S. Mandic, M. Mrzel, M. Norris, R. Ronald, H. Ruonavaara, B.A. Searle, A.M. Soaita, J. Sorvoll, A. Wallace, J.R. Zavisca