Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet

Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Housing, poverty and the welfare state: Spatial distribution of tenure types and its effects on housing deprivation, unemployment and residualisation
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Human Geography.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9214-0152
2018 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

An important question that has caused much academic debate is how to best organise the welfare state system to combat poverty and social exclusion. Much such research is focused on how to combat income poverty through core areas in the welfare state. This dissertation widens the perspective to include housing as a part of the welfare state and it represents an attempt to study poverty outcomes beyond income measures. In doing this, the dissertation uses power resource theory to understand welfare state change and the design of institutions in terms of housing tenures, and shows how this design might affect individual outcomes. Thus, the overall aim of this dissertation is to gain knowledge of the principles that underpin the design and organisation of the housing market in terms of tenure types and to understand the ways in which this design might affect the well-being of individuals and the society as a whole. The dissertation consists of an introductory essay and four papers. The introductory essay presents my theoretical approach and methodology. It also summarises the papers and discusses my main findings.

Paper I analyses the extent to which the organisation of the rental sector may explain cross-national differences in the prevalence of housing deprivation. Using a multilevel framework on survey data covering 26 European countries, I find that a large and integrated rental sector significantly reduces the prevalence of housing deprivation across EU countries. The organisation of the rental sector appears to be crucial when it comes to reducing poverty and social exclusion in terms of housing insufficiencies.

Paper II continues the quest to find explanations of the variations in the prevalence of housing deprivation in Europe. Our results develop the findings of Paper I. We find that a high proportion of outright owners is positively associated with housing deprivation. This is suggested to reflect the historical and political processes that affect the housing markets in eastern and southern European housing regimes.

Paper III investigates a puzzle regarding the relationship between the extent of home-ownership and unemployment. At the macro level, more home-owners indicate higher unemployment rates, while home-owners in general are less unemployed. What can explain this? In this paper, we show that regions with high home-ownership also tend to be regions with small labour markets, which affects the efficiency of matching on the labour market.

Paper IV turns to the process of residualisation, a process which can be described as when the public or social rental sectors become dominated by low-income households. For Sweden, this process is of key interest since the public housing sector aims to be universal and is not directed towards any specific income group. The results indicate a clear trend towards increasing residualisation. The trend is most pronounced in sparsely populated municipalities, while the public rental sector is quite mixed in larger cities and municipalities near larger cities.

This dissertation offers a contribution to the field of housing by showing that power resource theory may be used to understand institutional design in terms of tenure types, and that this design also affects individual outcomes. Moreover, power resource theory is presented as a viable theory to understand geographical variation in institutional design across and within countries.

 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Stockholm: Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University , 2018. , p. 87
Series
Meddelanden från Kulturgeografiska institutionen vid Stockholms universitet, ISSN 0585-3508 ; 155
Keywords [en]
housing, tenure types, welfare state, power resource theory, housing deprivation, unemployment, residualisation, Europe, Sweden
National Category
Human Geography
Research subject
Geography with Emphasis on Human Geography
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-159348ISBN: 978-91-7797-368-3 (print)ISBN: 978-91-7797-369-0 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-159348DiVA, id: diva2:1242249
Public defence
2018-10-12, Ahlmannsalen, Geovetenskapens hus, Svante Arrhenius väg 12, Stockholm, 10:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Note

At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.

Available from: 2018-09-19 Created: 2018-08-27 Last updated: 2022-02-26Bibliographically approved
List of papers
1. Housing Deprivation in Europe: On the Role of Rental Tenure Types
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Housing Deprivation in Europe: On the Role of Rental Tenure Types
2015 (English)In: Housing, Theory and Society, ISSN 1403-6096, E-ISSN 1651-2278, Vol. 32, no 1, p. 73-93Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the link between housing tenure typesand housing deprivation in 26 European countries. Empirical analyses are based onEuropean Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions 2007, enabling comparisons ofdeprivation across a large set of countries. A multilevel framework is employed. It is hypothesizedthat the organization of the rental sector inherently produces different housing marketdynamics, which is likely to affect housing deprivation rates. An integrated rental sector coveringbroader parts of the population is expected to reduce the risk of housing deprivation.Housing deprivation is measured in terms of experiencing overcrowding and while also sufferingany of the following accommodation problems: a leaking roof; no bath/shower; no indoortoilet; or a dwelling considered too dark. The findings indicate a negative association betweenthe size of the rental sector and the prevalence of housing deprivation. The organization of therental sector appears crucial and only an integrated rental sector encompassing broader partsof the population significantly reduces the prevalence of housing deprivation and its components.This association is robust in terms of confounding factors at the individual-level andcentral country-level contextual variables.

Keywords
Housing deprivation, Housing tenure types, Housing policy, Comparative analysis, EU-SILC
National Category
Human Geography
Research subject
Geography with Emphasis on Human Geography
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-109705 (URN)10.1080/14036096.2014.969443 (DOI)000351510800006 ()
Available from: 2014-11-27 Created: 2014-11-27 Last updated: 2022-02-23Bibliographically approved
2. Poor housing conditions in the European Union: Micro and macro level determinants
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Poor housing conditions in the European Union: Micro and macro level determinants
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

The overall aim of this paper was to study the variations in prevalence of housing deprivation, overcrowding and housing cost overburden between EU countries and to examine to what extent these between-country differences could be explained by measurable factors, either at the individual level or at the country level. We applied a multilevel framework on EU-SILC survey data, to be able to test the explanatory power of both micro level determinants (low income, household type, tenure status, education, joblessness etc.) and of macro level factors, such as national income, structure of housing market, welfare system, etc. Our results regarding the micro level indicated that factors related to permanent income, high costs/needs, and household size/type influenced the risk of facing poor housing conditions in a similar way as has been found for social and material deprivation. Moreover, there was a consistency among micro level risk factors across all dimensions of poor housing conditions. Our results regarding the macro level pointed to the importance of the historical and institutional factors that affect the availability and quality of housing in Eastern and Southern regimes, notably with a large proportion of outright home-ownership. Our results also shed new light on the impact of national wealth on housing deprivation. Despite a clear negative relationship between macro-economic affluence and housing deprivation, GDP or median income did not significantly impact housing deprivation once differences in micro drivers, notably household income, were taken into account.

National Category
Human Geography
Research subject
Geography with Emphasis on Human Geography
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-158747 (URN)
Available from: 2018-08-13 Created: 2018-08-13 Last updated: 2022-02-26Bibliographically approved
3. Do high levels of home-ownership create unemployment? Introducing the missing link between housing tenure and unemployment
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Do high levels of home-ownership create unemployment? Introducing the missing link between housing tenure and unemployment
2018 (English)In: Housing Studies, ISSN 0267-3037, E-ISSN 1466-1810, Vol. 33, no 4, p. 501-524Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

A large number of studies have demonstrated that the proportion of home-owners in a region tend to be positively associated with the unemployment levels in that region. In this paper, we introduce a missing piece of explaining this commonly found pattern. By analysing individual-level population register data on Sweden, we jointly examine the effects of micro- and macro-level home-ownership on individuals’ unemployment. The findings indicate that even though home-owners have a lower probability of being unemployed, there is a penalty for both renters and home-owners on unemployment in regions with high home-ownership rates. Differences in mobility patterns cannot explain this pattern. However, when labour market size is considered, the higher probability of unemployment in high home-owning regions is drastically reduced. This suggests that high home-ownership regions tend to coincide with small labour markets, affecting the job matching process negatively.

Keywords
Home-ownership, unemployment, regional labour market, job matching, mobility, Sweden, register data
National Category
Human Geography Sociology
Research subject
Geography with Emphasis on Human Geography
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-146406 (URN)10.1080/02673037.2017.1358808 (DOI)000432899000001 ()
Available from: 2017-08-29 Created: 2017-08-29 Last updated: 2022-02-28Bibliographically approved
4. Where to house the poor? The role of public housing in Sweden 1993-2012
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Where to house the poor? The role of public housing in Sweden 1993-2012
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Increasing concerns have been raised about the tendency for the public housing sector in Sweden to become dominated by low-income households, thus undergoing a process of residualisation. If this is happening, the universal character of municipal housing companies offering decent housing for all income groups is challenged. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the magnitude of residualisation and to discuss possible implications for the Swedish housing model using a novel Index of Residualisation and longitudinal register data covering the period 1993-2012. The results indicate that the rental sector as a whole is undergoing a process of residualisation, but that there are clear variations in the magnitude of residualisation across types of municipalities. This might suggest that well-off households have turned to private ownership. The process of residualisation is most pronounced in sparsely populated regions. The relative size of the public rental sector is a key factor to consider in order to understand the diverging trends. Regions with smaller rental sectors are associated with higher levels of residualisation, indicating that public housing may have the function of social housing in these regions.

Keywords
residualisation, public housing, Sweden, Index of residualisation, regions, poverty
National Category
Human Geography
Research subject
Geography with Emphasis on Human Geography
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-158748 (URN)
Available from: 2018-08-13 Created: 2018-08-13 Last updated: 2022-02-26Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

Housing, poverty and the welfare state(1359 kB)3080 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 1359 kBChecksum SHA-512
3fe8daf5114855a1291b8188f809f452e075eee4f21c9371895302c781c8abfb302094827eaaa36529452d7ff7008751d80f42f9f9308db296f04b1cfcf3c69e
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Borg, Ida
By organisation
Department of Human Geography
Human Geography

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 3080 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

isbn
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

isbn
urn-nbn
Total: 2960 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf