The hypothesis of a trade-off between homeownership and welfare state provision, first proposed by Jim Kemeny around 1980, is a foundational claim in the political economy of housing. However, the evidence for this hypothesis is unclear at both macro and micro levels. This paper examines the link between welfare and homeownership at the macro level using new long-run data and a multilevel modelling approach. It shows that the negative crosssectional correlation between homeownership and public welfare provision observed in the earliest available data disappears and becomes neutral by the 1980s and possibly positive subsequently. Within-country trajectories vary, but are significantly positive in more countries than significantly negative, suggesting that in some contexts welfare and homeownership are complements rather than competitors. The paper posits a dual ratchet effect mechanism in both pension benefits and homeownership capable of producing this inversion, and further suggests that rising public indebtedness and the debt-stabilising effects of welfare states may account for the emergence of complementarity in the pension-homeownership relationship. The latter supports the hypothesis that some countries have avoided the trade-off by 'buying time' on credit markets. KEYWORDS Homeownership; welfare; pensions; trade-off; long run Housing has long been relatively neglected in the comparative welfare states literature and in political economy more generally. Nevertheless, the best-established hypothesis in this terrain is the notion of a long-run trade-off between homeownership and social policy generosity, especially in old-age pensions (Kemeny 1981). Castles (1998) termed this homeownership-pension relationship the 'really big trade-off'. While scholars took up this hypothesis only sporadically for two decades, recent literature has CONTACT Sebastian Kohl