Summary: | The enormous growth in house prices in Europe since the 1990s has led to increasing
concerns about the affordability of housing for ordinary citizens. This paper explores
the relationship between housing affordability - house prices relative to incomes - and
the demand for redistributive and housing policy, using data drawn from European and
British social surveys and an analysis of British elections. It shows that, as unaffordability rises, citizens appear in aggregate to become less supportive of redistribution, interventionist housing policy, and left-wing parties. However, this aggregate rise, driven
by the predominance of homeowners in most European countries, masks a growing
polarization in preferences between renters and owners in less affordable regions.
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