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5 - Employment and money

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2024

Rory Coulter
Affiliation:
University College London
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Summary

As the GFC illustrated, it is difficult to overstate just how integral housing is to 21st-century economies and to the global financial system. Yet to fully understand how housing matters for economic prosperity and inequalities, we must look behind the national statistics at the ways in which housing careers are bound up with the labour market position and financial well-being of individuals and families over the life span.

This chapter uses the life course perspective to take a fresh look at how the deep interactions between housing and labour market careers influence economic outcomes at both the micro- and macro-levels. It shows how the ways people engage with both the labour market and the housing system over the course of their lives play a crucial role in determining the social distribution of resources. The chapter begins by using Chapter 2's life course conceptual toolbox to review how employment influences housing behaviour and housing system dynamics. It then inverts the focus to consider the role housing resources, opportunities and constraints play in shaping employment careers and the broader operation of labour markets. Finally, the chapter examines how differential accumulation and use of housing wealth influences contemporary patterns of social and spatial inequality.

Labour markets and residential behaviour

In Why Families Move, Rossi (1955) argued that housing transitions are adjustments undertaken to satisfy the new residential demands which emerge as people pass through the family life cycle. However, scholars quickly recognised that Rossi's demographically driven model said too little about labour force participation and in particular how a desire to improve one’s economic position or social status can be a powerful motive for residential adjustments (De Jong and Fawcett, 1981). Moreover, the housing choice set available to people and thus their ability to act on their residential preferences is stratified by employment status, class and income (Kendig, 1984). Early housing career models often downplayed these factors by simplistically assuming that occupational careers generally progress upwards over the life span as age brings promotions, higher wages and accumulated savings.

Since the 1970s, economic restructuring across the Global North under what has been variously termed the transition to post-Fordism, advanced capitalism or post-industrialism have shattered this optimistic assumption of occupational progression over the life span.

Type
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Housing and Life Course Dynamics
Changing Lives, Places and Inequalities
, pp. 97 - 122
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Employment and money
  • Rory Coulter, University College London
  • Book: Housing and Life Course Dynamics
  • Online publication: 18 January 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781447357698.006
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Save book to Dropbox

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  • Employment and money
  • Rory Coulter, University College London
  • Book: Housing and Life Course Dynamics
  • Online publication: 18 January 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781447357698.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Employment and money
  • Rory Coulter, University College London
  • Book: Housing and Life Course Dynamics
  • Online publication: 18 January 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781447357698.006
Available formats
×