> Home ownership rates for those under 30 at least have fallen considerably in many Western countries
Yes, it seems the under 30 crowd would rather go to college/university instead these days. A degree can cost about as much as a modest home. Almost nobody attended college in the 1950s. Hobbies always come with tradeoffs.
> And yes urbanisation has increased but not that dramatically.
15-20 points, at least in the USA. That is quite dramatic. If today's cities saw 15-20% of their population leave for rural areas, prices in those cities would drop like a rock.
> What hasn't really happened though is any significant new cities forming
Very true, and fantastically increased farm profitability since the 2007 time period has driven farmland values through the roof, which has made it much more cost prohibitive for cities to expand like they used it do.
> Yes, it seems the under 30 crowd would rather go to college/university instead these days.
Fairly sure housing affordability is a bigger problem for those without tertiary degrees though!
> 15-20 points, at least in the USA
I'd think if there was an era where urbanisation was highest it would be in the 50-60 years prior to the 60s, and I'm not aware of house prices dramatically increasing in that time (happy to be shown otherwise though!). But in that earlier period many quite modest-sized towns grew massively to become the cities they are today (*), so arguably there weren't quite so many people all trying to crowd into the same few cities.
(*) though in Australia at least, something of the opposite has happened in the last ~75 years - many modest-size towns have lost their populations to larger cities.
> Fairly sure housing affordability is a bigger problem for those without tertiary degrees though!
US data suggests that college graduates have seen the largest decline in homeownership over the past 10 years.
That said, you are right that college filters out those with disabilities and other life challenges, and that means those without degrees are infinitely more likely to have something like a crippling mental disability which would prevent them from owning a home. Which, indeed, makes drawing any aggregate parallels between graduates and non-graduates rather useless.
> I'd think if there was an era where urbanisation was highest it would be in the 50-60 years prior to the 60s
In fact, there was a bit of a counter-urbanization movement during the period. Cities were considered to be for the poor. Anyone with means wanted to live on large estates out in the countryside. There was also that whole "White Flight" thing. All that goes back to the people not wanting the houses.
It's easy to forget now that we've put in incredible effort to make cities more livable, but cities were industrial hell holes during the 50s and 60s. Not to mention that crime was starting to become a big problem by the 60s. They were not desirable places in the slightest. Today's cities are entirely different.
It is true that things are much more affordable when they are considered undesirable.
That's actually now perhaps getting closer to a better (if harder to demonstrate) theory - that housing has become unaffordable largely because we've made cities (and their surrounding suburbs) so much more desirable places to be in than they were 60 or 70 years ago.
Yes, it seems the under 30 crowd would rather go to college/university instead these days. A degree can cost about as much as a modest home. Almost nobody attended college in the 1950s. Hobbies always come with tradeoffs.
> And yes urbanisation has increased but not that dramatically.
15-20 points, at least in the USA. That is quite dramatic. If today's cities saw 15-20% of their population leave for rural areas, prices in those cities would drop like a rock.
> What hasn't really happened though is any significant new cities forming
Very true, and fantastically increased farm profitability since the 2007 time period has driven farmland values through the roof, which has made it much more cost prohibitive for cities to expand like they used it do.