Housing Insecurity Due to Affordability Problems in Spain: A comparison with the European Context

Spain is usually considered as a high-stable country in terms of duration of residence. Nevertheless, according to the 2012 wave of the European Quality of Life Survey, more than 1.2 million households thought they were likely to be forced to move because they could not afford their homes. This paper aims to study the level of housing insecurity in Spain, which is among the highest in Europe because: a) baseline housing insecurity is higher; b) the internal heterogeneity of insecurity against vulnerable groups is larger, and c) the relative weight of vulnerable groups is also greater. France and Italy’s levels and social distributions of housing insecurity are quite similar to Spain’s, whereas Germany and Sweden are in a much better position because their households feel more secure regardless of their social status. This paper argues that high housing insecurity impinges negatively upon the life course of young households. Finally, it is suggested that the Spanish system of intergenerational transmission of housing security is likely to disappear in the near future.