Geography of housing capital and housing structural sustainability

In an ageing region such as Europe, the question of the link between housing prices and demographics is an important issue. According to Eurostat, the fertility rate in 2024 was 1.53 children per woman, below the threshold for population growth of 2.1 children per woman. France, the European Union country with the highest number of children per woman in 2024 (INSEE, 2024), remains below the 2.1 threshold (the rate is 1.84). So, as in all ageing countries, the question of access to property arises. Indeed, as shown by Yang (2009), housing is perceived as a secured asset, which means that housing capital does not necessarily decrease with age, unlike consumption. This raises the question of access to housing for the younger generations, what Yates (2011) called “housing structural sustainability”, or “the needs of the present generation [that] can be met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.This article aim to analyze the housing structural sustainability in France through a quantitative analysis of the variation of the housing stock in France between 2012 and 2022. From an exhaustive dataset of housing transactions, we train a machine learning model to estimate a price for the entire housing stock based on a tax file dataset. Thanks to this new dataset, we take a comprehensive look at housing ownership between 2012 and 2022 and question the role of ageing in the concentration of wealth, which answers the following question: to what extent does ageing affect housing structural sustainability?This work is an original contribution in that it attempts to measure the concept of housing structural sustainability introduced by Yates through an exhaustive database of the housing stock in France and a spatial econometrics analysis.