IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/127648.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Housing and inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Ioannides, Yannis M
  • Ngai, L. Rachel

Abstract

We approach the literature on housing and inequality from two angles. One is the impact of unequal endowments on housing. The second is the “memberships” inequality associated with neighborhoods, namely, households’ location in a geographic and social context. We elaborate on these two angles of inequality and focus on three distinctive features of housing: consumption, capital, and location. For owner-occupants, capital and consumption are bundled together in a single good. For both renters and owner-occupants, housing consumption inequality, access to good neighborhoods, and housing wealth follow from unequal endowments. Housing can propagate inequality by enabling owner-occupants to use it as collateral for other investments or to secure higher returns to human capital investments through the better schools in better neighborhoods. We use this approach to analyze key aspects of housing and inequality, paying special attention to the impacts of racial discrimination and segregation.

Suggested Citation

  • Ioannides, Yannis M & Ngai, L. Rachel, 2025. "Housing and inequality," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 127648, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:127648
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/127648/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bayer, Patrick & Fang, Hanming & McMillan, Robert, 2014. "Separate when equal? Racial inequality and residential segregation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 32-48.
    2. James Cloyne & Kilian Huber & Ethan Ilzetzki & Henrik Kleven, 2019. "The Effect of House Prices on Household Borrowing: A New Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(6), pages 2104-2136, June.
    3. Peter Bergman & Raj Chetty & Stefanie DeLuca & Nathaniel Hendren & Lawrence F. Katz & Christopher Palmer, 2024. "Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Neighborhood Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(5), pages 1281-1337, May.
    4. David H. Autor & Christopher J. Palmer & Parag A. Pathak, 2014. "Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge, Massachusetts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(3), pages 661-717.
    5. Durlauf, Steven N, 1996. "A Theory of Persistent Income Inequality," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 75-93, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Botelho Azevedo, Alda & Gonçalves, Inês & Pereira dos Santos, João, 2025. "Can’t Buy Me Home: Beliefs, Facts, and Policy in the Housing Affordability Crisis," IZA Discussion Papers 18073, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guerrieri, Veronica & Hartley, Daniel & Hurst, Erik, 2013. "Endogenous gentrification and housing price dynamics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 45-60.
    2. Saiz, Albert, 2023. "The Global Housing Affordability Crisis: Policy Options and Strategies," IZA Policy Papers 203, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Osiris Jorge, Parcero & Adolfo, Cristobal-Campoamor, 2009. "Dynamics of neighborhood formation and segregation by income," MPRA Paper 16936, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Julia Fonseca & Lu Liu, 2024. "Mortgage Lock‐In, Mobility, and Labor Reallocation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 79(6), pages 3729-3772, December.
    5. Lijie Song, 2025. "Unveiling the Neighborhood Effect on Intergenerational Mobility: Which Scale is More Relevant?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 5-28, January.
    6. Blanco, Hector & Neri, Lorenzo, 2023. "Knocking It Down and Mixing It Up: The Impact of Public Housing Regenerations," IZA Discussion Papers 15855, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Alejandro Badel, 2015. "A Racial Inequality Trap," Working Papers 2015-34, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    8. Aliprantis, Dionissi & Carroll, Daniel R. & Young, Eric R., 2024. "What explains neighborhood sorting by income and race?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    9. Dionissi Aliprantis & Daniel R. Carroll, 2018. "Neighborhood dynamics and the distribution of opportunity," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(1), pages 247-303, March.
    10. Chapelle, Guillaume & Domènech Arumí, Gerard & Gobbi, Paula Eugenia, 2023. "Housing, Neighborhoods and Inequality," CEPR Discussion Papers 17969, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Tamar Ramot-Nyska, 2023. "Changing Residential Mobility Considerations: The Case of Public Housing in Israel," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2023.15, Bank of Israel.
    12. Andreas Bjerre-Nielsen & Mikkel Høst Gandil, 2024. "Attendance Boundary Policies and the Limits to Combating School Segregation," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 190-227, February.
    13. Christian A. L. Hilber & Olivier Schoni, 2022. "Housing policy and affordable housing," CEP Occasional Papers 56, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    14. Montalvo, José G. & Piolatto, Amedeo & Raya, Josep, 2020. "Transaction-tax evasion in the housing market," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    15. Young-Joo Kim & Myung Hwan Seo, 2017. "Is There a Jump in the Transition?," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(2), pages 241-249, April.
    16. Bratu, Cristina & Bolotnyy, Valentin, 2023. "Immigrant intergenerational mobility: A focus on childhood environment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    17. Rady, Sven & Ortalo-Magné, François, 2002. "Homeownership," Discussion Papers in Economics 28, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    18. Ea Hoppe Blaabæk & Mads Meier Jæger & Joseph Molitoris, 2020. "Family Size and Educational Attainment: Cousins, Contexts, and Compensation," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 36(3), pages 575-600, July.
    19. Steven N. Durlauf, 1996. "Statistical Mechanics Approaches to Socioeconomic Behavior," NBER Technical Working Papers 0203, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Charles Ka Yui Leung & Joe Cho Yiu Ng, 2018. "Macro Aspects of Housing," GRU Working Paper Series GRU_2018_016, City University of Hong Kong, Department of Economics and Finance, Global Research Unit.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:127648. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.