Trends in relative and absolute mobility of homeownership in Europe

Housing has recently gained importance as a new dimension of inequality with major implications for political preferences, perceptions, and participation. A key aspect of this inequality is the declining homeownership of younger generations across Europe. A common assumption is that this trend is increasingly stratified by parental homeownership. Rising house prices and tighter mortgage conditions are seen to benefit those who can rely on parental support to access the housing market. As a result, parental financial transfers are viewed as a decisive factor for homeownership, while those without access to the so-called “bank of mum and dad” are increasingly left behind. This, it is argued, has contributed to widening inequalities among younger generations, making housing a “family affair”, with access to homeownership increasingly dependent on whether one’s parents are homeowners.
In this study, we show that this assumption does not hold for the average European. Using EU-SILC data from 2011 and 2019 across 27 European countries, we examine trends in relative and absolute homeownership mobility for cohorts born between 1950 and 1984. Despite popular narratives, we find that differences in homeownership chances between children of owners and renters are significant but relatively stable across cohorts. Country variations mainly arise from mechanical factors linked to the very high homeownership levels of the parental generation.
This stability in relative mobility masks significant changes in absolute mobility: downward mobility increased from 16% to 36%, while upward mobility declined from 25% to 9% between those born in the 1950s and 1980s. While homeownership remains more common among children of owners, it has declined sharply for children across the board, regardless of parental housing tenure.
These findings bring an important puzzle that absolute and relative mobility trends diverge, both at the European and at the country level. We further examine this divergence through two counterfactual simulations fixing relative mobility at zero or at levels observed for the oldest cohorts.
Results suggest that the divergence stems mainly from structural changes possibly related to the transformation of housing markets especially in early 21st century, which drive absolute mobility, rather than from shifts in the “bank of mum and dad,” which affect relative mobility. These trends are broadly similar across countries, suggesting that global rises in house prices and declining affordability are likely the key forces behind these patterns, and that the political consequences of declining homeownership might be relevant across different socio-economic groups.