Unaffordable housing is pushing more young people to give up. Why that’s dangerous

When people decide they’ll never own a home, they start spending more, working less, and taking bigger financial risks.

That is the central finding of a new U.S. working paper on housing affordability, and it helps explain why today’s housing crisis is not just about housing. Once homeownership feels permanently out of reach, the authors argue that people do not simply adjust their housing plans – they change how they live. For the worse.