Housing as asset-based welfare. The case of France

Abstract

If France has been characterized as an intermediary case in housing regimes, the goal of this brief is to provide further qualitative dimensions to assess its peculiar form of Housing Asset-Based Welfare (HABW). To contribute to recent debates around homeownership, including the Western obsession with homeownership and the production of housing wealth and inequalities, we argue that despite French strong pro-homeownership policies since the 1970s and the will to keep afloat social welfare, a new regime based on housing policy, and retirement pension reforms developed since the 1990s. It favoured the advancement of ordinary financialization amongst French households, with a constant increase in the ratio of debt to disposable income, and unequal effects in terms of homeownership access and personal wealth.