Trends in relative and absolute mobility of homeownership in Europe

Homeownership has declined markedly among younger generations across Europe. A common assumption is that this decline is increasingly stratified by parental homeownership, due to rising house prices and the growing importance of parental financial support. We show that this assumption does not hold for the average European. Using data from EU-SILC 2011 and 2019 covering 24 European countries, we examine trends in relative and absolute mobility of homeownership for birth cohorts 1951 to 1984. On average, both relative and absolute mobility remain largely stable across cohorts. However, this apparent stability masks a deeper structural cohort shift: downward mobility increased from 14% to 36%, while upward mobility declined from 25% to 11% between cohorts born in the 1950s and 1980s. Therefore, homeownership has declined for both children of homeowners and renters. We also compare absolute and relative mobility trends across countries and show that they often diverge for two reasons. First, a mechanical effect of the origin distribution: in countries with widespread parental homeownership, relative mobility largely reflect changes in upward mobility. Second, the source of mobility: using two counterfactual simulations, we show that observed absolute mobility changes mainly stem from structural shifts in homeownership chances across generations, rather than changes in parent-child associations.