PhD thesis defence by Balthazar de Robiano
This thesis studies the transformations of housing provision as a result of housing financialisation in advanced economies and the consequences of these transformations on welfare and inequalities. Therein, I argue that governments have largely disinvested the promotion of affordable housing and have promoted homeownership through mortgage credit instead. This change has led to a process of housing financialisation, whereby mortgage credit gained a systematic macroeconomic weight and whereby house prices soared. I argue, through comparative sequence analysis, that housing financialisation has significantly increased economic inequalities. By sustaining strong rises in price-to-income ratios of housing property, housing financialisation has led to a process of stratification between households deemed creditworthy and others, even in the most equal countries. Meanwhile, declining political support for the provision of affordable rental supply, rising price-to-rent ratios and rising demand for rental supply have led to worsening conditions for renters, albeit less severely in countries that significantly decommodify rental markets. I use the concept of tenure inequalities to capture the combined processes of social stratification by tenure – whereby richer households increasingly become homeowners and low- and middle-income households increasingly remain renters – and the rising disadvantages of renters compared to homeowners. As a result of tenure inequalities, young individuals, excluded from the protected sections of rental markets as outsiders increasingly rely on parental resources to secure stable and affordable housing, reflecting growing familialisation even in traditionally defamilialised countries. Finally, housing financialisation, far from incentivising redistribution to offset increased market inequalities and strengthening human capital, sustains strong anti-redistributive coalitions amongst homeowners, whilst strengthening territorial cleavages.
Balthazar de Robiano is a PhD candidate in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute. Written under the supervision of Professor Anton Hemerijck, his thesis examines the political economy of housing finance and its implications for economic inequality. His research compares how different countries regulate housing finance to promote either homeownership or rental markets, and explores the resulting effects on income, wealth, and tenure inequalities. He also investigates how these dynamics influence social mobility, particularly through young people’s reliance on parental wealth and regional disparities. Beyond economic inequality, his work engages with the political consequences of financialisation, including its role in driving polarisation through privatisation and social fragmentation.