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Housing, housing assistance and social cohesion in Australia

Summary

Project Number: 50300
Research Theme: Social_wellbeing
Project Leader: Hulse, Kath
Funding Year: 2005
Research Centre: Swinburne-Monash

Research & Policy Bulletin

Issue 092: How do housing and housing assistance relate to social cohesion?

Social cohesion has three key dimensions: social connectedness, inequality and cultural environment. Many aspects of housing, including tenure type and location, affect the level of social cohesion within a community.

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138 KB PDF Document

Description

The research comprised:

• An extensive review of the policy and research literature on social cohesion, social capital and social exclusion.
• Bivariate analysis of the relationships between housing/place, housing assistance and social cohesion, using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ General Social Survey (2002) and the AHURI Entering Rental Housing Survey (2004).
• Multiple linear regressions using data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics of Australia Survey (HILDA) (2001, 2004) and the Australian Institute of Family Studies’ Social Capital Survey (2001).

The key findings of the research are:

• Compared with home owning, public and private renting is negatively associated with most of the variables indicating social connectedness at a neighbourhood level: attachment to area, neighbourhood trust and cooperation, shared neighbourhood and identification with local area.
• Levels of neighbourhood interaction increase soon after people become purchasers or owners, perhaps indicating a greater social investment as well as financial investment within the local area on their part.
• Home purchasers and private renters feel the highest levels of social support and are most likely to do volunteer work.
• There is a consistently strong negative association between social connectedness and living in a metropolitan area compared with living in non-metropolitan areas.
• There is a strong association between stability in housing and various aspects of social connectedness, whilst mobility is negatively related with social connectedness.
  

More Information

Research and Policy Bulletin: Issue 092: How do housing and housing assistance relate to social cohesion?
138 KB PDF Document

Positioning Paper: No. 091: Housing, housing assistance and social cohesion
1.7 MB PDF Document

Final Report: No. 100: Housing and social cohesion: an empirical exploration
1.04 MB PDF Document