This book addresses the ongoing transformations in housing systems with a focus on current and future roles of home ownership in social policies and welfare practices. It considers home ownership in terms of diverse meanings and manifestations, as well as its part in the political, socioeconomic and demographic changes that characterize the emerging epoch. Interdisciplinary international contributors draw upon diverse empirical data to explore how housing and home ownership has become so embedded in polity, economy and household welfare conditions in various social and cultural contexts.

Preface Introduction 1. Beyond Home Ownership Part 1: Demographic Change, Housing Wealth and Welfare 2. Housing and Demographic Change 3.The Housing Pillar of the Mediterranean Welfare Regime: Family, State and Market in the Social Production of Home Ownership in Italy 4. Home Ownership in Post-Socialist Countries: Between Macro Economy and Micro Structures of Welfare Provision Part 2: Government, Markets and Policies 5. Home Ownership and Nordic Housing Policies in 'Retrenchment' 6. Owner-Occupation in an Increasingly Uncertain World: The English Experience 7. Home Ownership as Public Policy in the USA 8. Home Ownership Risk and Responsibility Before and After the U.S. Mortgage Crisis Part 3: Housing Ladders and Fading Dreams 9. The Shifting Housing Opportunities of Younger People in Japan's Home-Owning Society 10. Home Ownership - Continuing or Fading Dream?

Richard Ronald is an Assistant Professor in Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Housing and Interior Design at Kyung Hee University, Seoul. He is review editor of the International Journal of Housing Policy and section editor of the International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home. He has published widely on housing, urban and social change in Europe and Asia-Pacific and in particular on international market and policy transformations concerning home ownership.

Marja Elsinga is a Professor in the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. She is associate editor-in-chief of the International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home and editor-in-chief of the Dutch Journal for Housing. She has published widely on home ownership and risk, housing affordability, social housing and housing governance.