Immobilien und Ungleichheit

Since the middle of the 20th century, the macroeconomic importance of real estate has been increasing in many countries. This also brings to attention the distribution of housing wealth and its impact on wealth and income inequality. We first look at the long-term development of real estate prices, home ownership rates and wealth concentration, addressing international as well as regional differences within Germany. In general, higher ownership rates are associated with lower levels of wealth inequality. In Germany, the recent increase in real estate prices has caused the gap between the upper and lower halves of the wealth distribution to widen. We then show, that the distribution of rental income and housing wealth can explain approximately one third of total income and wealth inequality. Finally, we address the distributional effects of prominent housing policy measures, which are mostly ambiguous and depend on the design of individual policy measures