The spatial polarization of housing wealth accumulation across Spain
Metadata
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SAGE
Materia
Housing wealth Inequality Housing market
Date
2024-04-22Referencia bibliográfica
Arundel, R., Torrado, J. M., & Duque-Calvache, R. (2024). The spatial polarization of housing wealth accumulation across Spain. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0(0). [https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X241247738]
Sponsorship
Dutch Research Council under the grant ‘WEALTHSCAPES: The spatial polarization of housing markets and divided access to housing wealth accumulation’ [grant number: Vl.Veni.201S.031]; Research Project ‘Multi-methodological Approach to Residential Behaviour and Everyday Life (MARBEL)’, code PID2020.119569GA.I00 funded by MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033Abstract
Housing wealth is central to structuring inequalities across societies. Processes of financialization have intensified
the speculative nature of housing, while labour and welfare restructuring increase the importance of property
wealth towards economic security. Housing, however, represents an exceptional asset given its inherently
spatial nature and buy-in barriers. This implies that not only access to homeownership but where households
enter the housing market is central to wealth trajectories. Spatial inequality in housing trends thus fundamentally
structures wealth dynamics. While some scholarship has posited increasing housing market spatial polarization,
there remains a lack of empirical evidence. This research turns to the context of Spain, to directly assess spatial
polarization in housing value accumulation. Employing an innovative dataset at a detailed geographic scale, the
analyses reveal strong increases in polarization across the national territory over the past decade. Strikingly,
these dynamics appear resistant to major upheavals, including the post-GFC crash and Covid-19 impacts, and
are robust across scales. The analyses reveal that more expensive areas saw greater absolute gains and higher
rates of appreciation. The findings expose a structural intensification of spatial polarization and provide crucial
empirical evidence of how the housing market acts in amplifying inequality through the spatial sorting of wealth
accumulation.