Housing Expenditure and Overburden of Households in EU Countries

Abstract

The article contributes to the identification of significant differences between EU countries in overburden resulting from the availability of housing. The EU and its institutions do not have direct competence, and housing policy does not fall under the common policy of the EU. We will focus on selected dimensions: accessibility and affordability of housing, owning, or renting housing in EU countries. We research four housing categories according to tenure: owner with no outstanding mortgage or housing loan, owner with a mortgage or loan tenant paying rent at market price, and tenant paying rent with reduction or free. In this paper, we examine the overburden of housing expenses on households in these four categories. This exploratory research and according to the type of data used is a quantitative research study. We used box plots to visualize the data. Based on the cluster analysis, we can state that EU countries naturally divide into three clusters as per the countries' approach to housing solutions in 2009 and in 2020, too. The Baker Hubert gamma index value is 0.0462, which means that the dendrograms in 2009 and in 2020 are not statistically similar. This proves that not only there are differences between individual countries, but the development of the share of overburden in the four examined categories is different. It would be appropriate to find appropriate instruments to enforce the same or at least a similar approach to housing for inhabitants in all EU countries.