Housing is key to inclusive growth. It is the biggest spending item of household budgets, the main driver of wealth accumulation and biggest source of debt for most households. Housing and the neighbourhood in which people live also have important implications for individual health, employment and educational outcomes – effects that can begin in childhood and can last a lifetime.

Housing is key to inclusive growth. It is the biggest spending item of household budgets, the main driver of wealth accumulation and biggest source of debt for most households. Housing and the neighbourhood in which people live also have important implications for individual health, employment and educational outcomes - effects that can begin in childhood and can last a lifetime. Nevertheless, the housing market may also present a barrier to inclusive growth for some groups, such as low-income households, children, youth, seniors and the homeless. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted even more abruptly just how important housing issues are to people, and prompted governments to introduce a range of emergency housing supports. However, the pandemic has also underscored the need for governments to develop more structural responses to address persistent housing challenges. This report assesses the key underlying pre-COVID-19 housing policy issues and proposes a series of recommendations to support more inclusive housing outcomes. These include measures to address some of the structural barriers to inclusive growth in the housing market, as well as measures to address the specific housing challenges facing vulnerable groups.

This report provides ground-breaking, internationally comparable data on economic growth, inequalities and well-being at the city level in OECD countries, and a framework for action, to help national and local governments reorient policies towards more inclusive growth in cities.

The discussion of where people live and how people pay for their housing has undergone a significant shift. Until the mortgage crisis erupted in 2008, the housing policy of most nations focused on increasing home ownership. There had been very little discussion about rental housing, less about social housing, and virtually none about public housing. The mortgage crisis showed the challenges inherent in pushing for home ownership for all. With homes going into foreclosure and with credit tightening in many countries, the need for rental housing increased dramatically. However, most countries are only beginning to consider supporting rental housing as a shelter option. This book is an effort to bring rental housing to the forefront of the housing agenda and to provide general guidance to policy makers. The information it provides can assist key players in housing markets--government officials, private rental property owners, financiers, and nongovernmental organizations--in including rental housing as a critical housing option and in having an informed discussion on how best to stimulate this sector.

This book is a much-needed account, with numerous detailed examples, of the role of housing in economic growth and development by an author in a unique position to understand its importance and the practical measures for delivering that growth. While the linkages between housing and the macroeconomic environment in developed countries has been studied, the case of developing and transitional countries has been mostly overlooked. The author establishes these linkages with great clarity, supported by detailed case studies chosen to reflect regional diversity as well as differences in socio-economic development and political systems. On the basis of this analysis, the author goes on to develop specific policies and practices to enable governments to enhance the contribution of housing in economic growth.

Using a partially constructed panel database of 48 Sub-Saharan African countries from 2000 to 2013, this paper analyzes the structure of housing finance in Africa, its determinants, and its impact on inclusive growth. The findings show that market capitalization and urbanization are key positive determinants of housing finance, and the post-conflict environment is conductive to greater housing finance development. This result suggests that housing finance is driven by standard market forces of demand and supply. In addition, the analysis finds that housing finance development in Africa is not yet an effective tool for reducing economic inequality, at its current, very early stage. However, the paper shows that above a given threshold, housing finance could be efficient at reducing inequality. Finally, there is a slightly positive relationship between housing finance and greater economic development in Africa. All these findings suggest that policies to boost housing finance development in Africa would be fruitful in the medium to long terms.

This report presents the OECD Framework for Policy Action on Inclusive Growth, developed to help governments to improve the prospects of those currently being left behind.