Transformations in Housing and Intergenerational Contracts in Europe (THICE)

This project aims to deepen the understanding of how housing wealth is reshaping intergenerational relationships in Europe and to explore socially just solutions. Increasing housing inequalities with growing concentrations of wealth among homeowners, especially older ones, and diminishing access to affordable housing, especially among younger adults have affected European societies in recent decades. At the same time, there has been a revival of family dependencies and intergenerational transfers that sustain welfare and life-course transitions for younger generations. Intergenerational support, both financial and in kind, has increasingly centred on housing with, for example, rising adult co-residence with parents and family assistance for people buying their first property. This marks a profound shift in the intergenerational contract. To investigate this restructuring of the intergenerational contract, the project applies a comparative, cross-disciplinary approach that integrates quantitative and qualitative analyses. While work packages 1 to 4 focus on analysing the institutional foundations of intergenerational relations; the varying meanings and practices of family and kinship and their intersection with housing and household formation; the intergenerational support and its outcomes; and the inequalities between and within generations in the context of housing.