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Hanse Wissenschaftskilleg Senior Fellowship
Dates: August 2022, June-August 2023)
Funding Organisation/Programme: HWK
Principal Investigator: Dr Stephan Köppe, Asst. Prof. (Social Policy), UCD School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice and co-director of the MPP programme
Summary
During 2022/2023 Dr Stephan Köppe was hosted as Senior Fellow at the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg for Advanced Studies in Germany. While kicking off the project Housing Wealth in Germany: Inequalities, Inheritance and Political Attitudes in 2022, Dr Köppe will return to the HWK in Delmenhorst, Germany in summer 2023. In collaboration with the University of Bremen Dr Köppe will analyse housing wealth inequalities in Germany.
Access to affordable housing has reached the front pages of German newspapers and has become an election topic. Although Germany did not experience the similar astronomical rises of rents and house prices as other nations to the run up of the financial crisis, since then affordable housing became a concern across the country.
Access to affordable housing has reached the front pages of German newspapers and has become an election topic. Although Germany did not experience the similar astronomical rises of rents and house prices as other nations to the run up of the financial crisis, since then affordable housing became a concern across the country.
Also Germany has been long championed as a rental society, but in the last decade homeownership rates have increased gradually. This project aims to understand this dual trend of rising house prices and homeownership from the perspective of housing wealth inequalities and politics.
The research draws on existing information from people since 1990 and aims to understand who has increased their housing wealth and who has lost out. Two aspects are of particular concern.
- First, who are these people who have benefitted from increased house prices? We follow these people over time and aim to identify those that were left behind and those that profited. A particular focus is on younger generations. High rents reduce their savings potential for a deposit and short term-contracts limit their credit rating. Therefore, the research looks at how young Germans turn to the Bank of Mum and Dad to acquire housing wealth.
- Second, theses inequalities also shape political attitudes. The project asks if these new homeowners turn to more conservative parties that promise to protect their wealth.
For more information please contact Dr Stephan Köppe. Email: (opens in a new window)Stephan.Koeppe@ucd.ie