Housing
Studies of dwellings, household formation, property, and how homes are occupied as populations change.
Related questions
- What is the lifetime household comparison between living together and maintaining separate households?
- How does the timing of cohabitation change the cost of living and saving?
- How does living with parents during the first years of employment compare with paying rent for a separate household?
- What is the lifetime wealth comparison between delaying car ownership and buying a car at first employment?
- What happens to housing when people live longer?
- How do longer lives change work, education, and family timing?
- What happens to house prices when population declines?
- Can housing scarcity persist while population falls?
Relevant claims
- GSX:HH-001: For two Gauteng adults bringing home R30,000 and R20,000 a month, combining households at 25 rather than 35 leaves about R3.972 million more combined household wealth at 75 in the average scenario, in constant 2026 rand. The direct living-cost saving is about R1.059 million. The larger gap comes from investing that earlier saving and from avoiding expensive negative balances.
- GSX:HH-002: In the central middle-salary Johannesburg scenario, living in the family home and delaying a car purchase for three years creates R602,000 more modelled net capital at age 25, and R3.32 million more modelled wealth at age 60, than moving out and financing a car immediately. The age-60 figure holds when the gap is preserved on the manuscript's common post-25 path.
- GSX:POP-007: If a conventional life retires at 65 and the person lives to 120, retirement lasts 55 years and the modelled pension finances only 57 percent of the target income, even with uninterrupted employment.
- GSX:POP-009: In the central scenario, a 22.2 percent population decline by 2076 coincides with 3.5 percent more households. The same run can still produce a shortage of roughly 54,000 habitable homes after the city has lost 266,000 people.
- GSX:WPL-001: For matched descendants, the central scenario produces median marketable net worth after forty years of R3.67 million with a titled township home and R5.24 million with a middle-value suburban home. The difference is R1.57 million, in constant 2024 rand.
Major assumptions
- Average-case returns and costs · high sensitivity · GSX:HH-001
- Central shrinkage path · high sensitivity · GSX:POP-009
- Common path after age 25 · high sensitivity · GSX:HH-002
- Contribution while living at home · high sensitivity · GSX:HH-002
- Conventional three-stage life · high sensitivity · GSX:POP-007
- Extended healthy adulthood · high sensitivity · GSX:POP-007
- Hybrid transport while the car is delayed · high sensitivity · GSX:HH-002
- Hypothetical Gauteng-scale city-region · high sensitivity · GSX:POP-009
Datasets
- The Economics of Living Together · GSX:HH-001
- The First Three Years Advantage · GSX:HH-002
- The Hundred-Year Life · GSX:POP-007
- How to Shrink a Country Without Breaking It · GSX:POP-009
- Inherited Geography · GSX:WPL-001
Connected topics