Dream on: Declining homeownership and young people in Australia?

The basis on which policy-makers, researchers and commentators promote the idea that Australia has witnessed a major decline in homeownership is reliant on measurements that are rarely scrutinized. In this article, certain findings about changes in homeownership rates are examined while also pointing to the ways that counting processes informed by certain assumptions that are problematic. While the material used in this article is Australian, we suggest that many of the issues raised are also common to other western nations and for this reason the arguments and conclusions made have a more general application. We note that considerable variations exist in purported changes in homeownership rates, while also arguing that reliance on census data does not allow strong conclusions to be drawn about homeownership rates or movements in and out of homeownership over the past few decades of young people, or indeed any age cohort. Different data and analyses are required. Homeownership rates involve definitions and interpretations, which have significance that are too often are fully appreciated by policy-makers. This, it is argued, has serious implications for housing policy