16:50 - 18:30
P5
Room: South Room 224
Panel Session 5
Tom O'Grady, Andreas Wiedemann - How Geographic Sorting by the Middle Classes Threatens Redistributive Coalitions
Matthias Haslberger - House Price Inequality and Political Efficacy
Bilyana Petrova - Income Composition Inequality and Preferences for Economic Redistribution
Federico Fuchs - Policy Preferences and Organizational Representation in the Informal Economy
House Price Inequality and Political Efficacy
P5-02
Presented by: Matthias Haslberger
Matthias Haslberger, Mads Andreas Elkjaer, Ben Ansell
University of Oxford, Nuffield College and Department of Politics and International Relations
A chronic housing shortage and surging house prices have become a major political issue in the United Kingdom and other countries. This paper investigates how perceptions of and information about inequality in house prices affect individuals’ internal and external political efficacy, using new data from a large representative survey experiment that was administered in England and Wales.

Previous research has established that people generally underestimate the extent of inequality in their community, and that high inequality undermines political participation of disadvantaged groups. Therefore, we hypothesise that less affluent respondents exhibit lower political efficacy and that experimentally exposing respondents to information about inequality in house prices at the local or national level reduces their political efficacy, especially among non-homeowners.

We find that respondents who own (more valuable) houses report higher political efficacy, while those who are more concerned about inequality exhibit lower efficacy. However, informing respondents about the extent of inequality in house prices does not reduce external efficacy, and the effect on internal efficacy is positive. Moreover, we show striking heterogeneous effects. Non-owners have significantly lower internal efficacy than homeowners, but the gap vanishes when they are shown local house prices compared to the national distribution. This effect is particular to housing; it does not translate to other measures of affluence.

These findings suggest that arguments which link perceptions of inequality and reduced political participation, may not apply to the housing market. Thus, our paper highlights the salience of the housing market for political behaviour and outcomes.