This article provides a critique of the use of Esping-Andersen and Kemeny’s typologies of welfare and housing regimes, both of which are often used as starting points for country selections in comparative housing research. We find that it is conceivable that housing systems may reflect the wider welfare system or diverge from it, so it is not possible to “read across” a housing system from Esping-Andersen’s welfare regimes. Moreover, both are dated and require revisiting to establish whether they still reflect reality. Of the two frameworks, Esping-Andersen’s use of the state-market-family triangle is more geographically mobile. Ultimately, housing systems are likely to be judged on the “housing outcomes” that they produce. However, it is suggested that current use of variables within EU-SILC in order to establish “housing outcomes” may be misleading since they do not reflect acceptable standards between countries with greatly differing general living standards and cultural norms.
Since the 1990s it has become common for central banks to be charged with using interest rates to meet consumer price inflation (CPI) targets. This article examines the cases of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Bank of England (BoE) and finds that whereas the RBA’s CPI target includes a housing cost element, the BoE’s does not. Moreover, it finds that contrasting treatments of housing costs produce different results, depending on whether the index includes mortgage interest as a housing cost. Whilst central banks dislike CPIs that include an element of mortgage interest because of the apparently perverse outcome of increasing interest rates, they also lack credibility by excluding such an important element of the cost of living. Credibility demands that the 30-year consensus on inflation targeting by monetary policy be replaced by a broader set of tools – including fiscal policy – to control inflation.
This paper revisits and revises the over-used State - Market - Household triangle as a theoretical analytical tool, proposing its repositioning at the centre of Housing and Welfare Studies, and reopening the debate. The goal is to eventually elaborate a dynamic visualization of the State - Market - Family triangle’s spatial and temporal transformations and transitions in housing provision, considering the relations of the actors involved. Towards this goal two conceptual adaptations are proposed. Firstly, it is suggested to add the parameter of time when assessing the triangle’s transformations from one era to another, or when comparing systems with similarities but on different evolutionary phases. Secondly, it is necessary to introduce - by default - an understanding of the triangle as a dynamic configuration, due to inter- and intra-polar shifts. It is argued that, apart from remaining a useful theoretical research tool, such visualization offers the opportunity to communicate various studies’ findings to a wider, often non-specialist audience.
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