Housing wealth and welfare over the life course

This paper conceptualises housing wealth and welfare across the life course. Drawing from the empirical literature on housing wealth transitions, mainly in the United Kingdom, we develop a framework to capture housing wealth from the cradle to the grave. The gAMUT approach captures four key stages: Accumulation, Managing, Using and Transferring of housing wealth. Beyond housing, other wealth and asset types can be incorporated such as savings, bonds or physical wealth. Based on these four stages welfare benefits and drawback as well as opportunities and risks across the life course are discussed. We show that the benefits of housing wealth are later in life. Yet, homeowners face new social risks throughout the life course, they would otherwise not have to worry about. For instance, utilising housing wealth for care needs is a highly individualised risk. Those who incur little care costs can transfer their entire home to their children, while children with parents who have intensive care needs loose substantial amounts of their inheritance. We conclude that housing wealth accumulation potentially has huge individual welfare benefits if managed well and within fortunate economic environment, but is a poor financing mechanism to cover social risks.