Housing Wealth and Asset-based Welfare as Risk

• Authors: Stephan Köppe
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Housing wealth has been viewed as the main route to asset-based welfare. Accumulated wealth is supposed to provide more in the way of welfare services than just shelter, services such as a net pension and the financing of long-term care. This paper challenges this view and highlights the new risks attached to acquiring and managing housing wealth. Although assets may provide a nest egg in old age, earlier on in the life cycle they leave mortgagers disproportionately exposed to financial and housing market risks and amplify susceptibility to existing social risks such as unemployment or sickness. In contrast to social insurance schemes, assets individualise social risks and leave it to the individual to smooth housing consumption over their life. This lack of risk pooling constitutes a new and hidden social risk that should be considered in the discussion around homeownership.

Keywords

EN

asset-based welfare; new social risks; social insurance; risk management

Discipline

• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Critical Housing Analysis
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 42-51
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Stephan Köppe

• Critical Housing Analysis, redakce,Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v. v. i. Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic