Inheriting housing inequality: Parental homeownership and place of origin as key factors for homeownership in Japanese metropolitan areas

Abstract

The term “housing ladder” refers to the phenomenon of people moving from one housing type to another according to changing demands of different life stages. This phenomenon is observed in many countries and is known as the Jutaku Sugoroku Paradigm in the Japanese context. This study aims to clarify whether adult children's access to homeownership might be affected by their parents' homeownership and their place of origin. Questionnaire Data from a survey across Japan's two largest metropolitan areas, Tokyo and Osaka, were analyzed by combining crosstabulations and a binomial logit model. The results revealed that individuals are more likely to attain homeownership if they come from a metropolitan area and if their home of origin is an owner-occupied house. These findings suggest that housing inequality is being passed on to the next generation by parents' homeownership status and residential location. Japanese housing policies that promote private ownership of housing may reinforce these inequalities. The study concludes that Japan experiences the same intergenerational transmission of housing inequality due to homeownership as other countries, whereas place of origin was an additional factor for homeownership in the Japanese context.