In the context of poorly performing national economies and sustained employment insecurity since the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008, various UK and US studies have suggested that the transitions of younger people into independent living and into homeownership, in particular, have been in decline. Testing the wider validity of these findings for western European countries, this paper uses cross‐sectional European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data to deconstruct to what extent and on which basis pre‐crisis to post‐crisis changes in the living arrangements of 18–34‐year olds have varied across 15 European Union countries. Our results confirm a common trend towards diminishing access to homeownership, bringing about larger rental sectors in many countries. Yet, we are far from observing the rise of a ‘Generation Rent’, because the stronger transformation process is one towards a higher share of younger adults living in co‐residence with their parents. Our empirical study further demonstrates that the directions of these shifts may vary strongly across countries, where the crisis has in some cases undermined existing residential patterns and forced realignment in the living arrangements among younger generations. Moreover, the study suggests that, although higher post‐crisis declines in young‐age homeownership is also associated with adverse labour market conditions, it seems to be primarily the volatility of more financialised housing markets that lead to increasing difficulties for younger people to realise housing property ownership. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Emerging affordability problems in British housing have accentuated the role of parental support in facilitating entry to homeownership, with financial transfers and in-kind support smoothening transitions for many. This article explores housing trajectories, focusing on how dependency and autonomy are negotiated within and across generations in relation to gifts, loans and in-kind transfers for home purchase. It draws on the experiences of a group of young adults aged 25–35 and those family members who supported them in acquiring a home. We consider the nature of support, and how those giving and receiving it understand this exchange. We show that gifting for homeownership is an ‘ideal gift’, allowing givers to exercise moral control over the receivers by supporting a normalized tenure choice. Managing relationships of indebtedness between kin presupposes negotiations in which the maintenance of autonomy is paramount. The article examines four types of negotiations and their impact on intergenerational relations.

Transitions to adulthood not only represent a key period for individual development but also contribute to processes of social stratification. Growing evidence has pointed to increased complexity, postponement and individualization in transition dynamics. Previous research has focused on trends in school-to-work transitions and family formation; however, the central role of housing represents an interrelated process that is less understood. As pathways to adulthood have diversified, many young people experience partial independence in one sphere while continued dependence in others. Semi-dependent housing, either through parental coresidence or shared living, can be an important coping mechanism. Using the EU-SILC dataset, the research investigates the role that semi-dependent living plays within emerging adulthood across varied European contexts. The data suggests that the extent and type of semi-dependent housing varies substantially across EU15 countries. The findings indicate that levels of housing independence can be partly explained by welfare regime context while the propensity for shared living appears correlated with affordability in the rental market.Although socio-cultural and economic trends play an important and interrelated role, the study argues that housing dynamics of young adulthood and the role of semi-dependent living is fundamentally shaped by the context of the housing system and welfare regime.

Homeownership has been declining in favour of private renting in most developed English speaking countries since the early-2000s. Public debates in countries like Britain, Australia and the US have subsequently focused on the ostensible coming of age of 'generation rent', constituted of younger individuals excluded from home buying and traditional routes to housing asset accumulation. While the focus of this paper is the significance of access to housing assets as a means to offset potential economic and welfare precarity, our concern is landlords rather than tenants. Drawing on British survey data, we show that the rental boom has been accompanied by increasing multiple property ownership among classes of largely middle-aged and relatively affluent households. Over one-million small-time landlords have emerged in the last decade alone, who, we argue, are part product of historic developments in housing markets and welfare states. Generations of British have not only been orientated towards their homes as commodity assets, they have also begun to mobilise around multi-property accumulation in a context of shifting welfare and pension expectations. ARTICLE HISTORY

The idea that households should be encouraged to invest in assets that accrue over the lifetime to be drawn upon when needed (usually later in life), or assed-based-welfare, became increasingly evident in early-2000s policy discourse. The global housing boom, meanwhile, made home ownership and housing assets a specific focus of reforms. However, the housing base of asset-based welfare has been transfigured in the last decade. In this paper we address how the home has retained its centrality as an asset base of individual welfare, yet under distorted conditions of access and distribution due to shifting socioeconomic and housing market environments. Rather than evening out the spread of welfare resources, housing markets have begun to polarize household conditions. We specifically focus on the British case, which appears to have manifested a rather extreme case of intergenerational housing wealth polarization, expanding the private rental sector and landlord numbers whilst undermining the homeownership base.

Welfare-state restructuring featuring the use of equity held in owner-occupied housing assets to offset declining public welfare resources and diminishing pension reserves-a form of 'homeownership-based welfare'-has become increasingly prominent in many developed economies in recent decades. This paper, focusing on the UK, examines the shifting position of homeownership, arguing that while the private home has become a key component of welfare restructuring, both owner-occupation and housing equity have become more polarised in the last decade, especially across cohorts. A particular concern is whether passive homeownership-based welfare switching strategies have become more active, or even pro-active, strategies to housing property accumulation as a means to compensate for welfare state retrenchment and anticipated pension shortfalls leading up to and since the Global Financial Crisis. We identify the significance of the rapid advance of a 'generation landlord' in the recent development of 'generation rent'.

Distinguishable patterns of mass homeownership have emerged across industrialised societies in recent decades, and have become increasingly central in comparative analyses of housing systems. This paper examines the nature of differences and similarities within and between two particular groups of societies where owner occupation dominates housing demand and policy systems, one constituted of English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon societies, and another of East Asian societies. The paper considers the potential of forming loose models based on core divergences in terms of systems, regimes and socio-ideological relationships. The aim is to further illustrate interactions between housing systems and welfare regimes in international contexts. Comparisons of housing and welfare elements are broadly related between societies, rather than quantitatively isolated, as systems are substantially variegated across the East Asian region. However, a loose system-model provides considerable insight into convergence within the group in regards to how housing systems have served a minimal social-welfare regime type.