5 ms·
What does "housing poverty" mean here? As far as I can tell it means "houses smaller than I am used to". In which case I have to ask what is the concern with ho
by noelwelsh 6y ago
What does "housing poverty" mean here? As far as I can tell it means "houses smaller than I am used to". In which case I have to ask what is the concern with houses less than 2500 sq ft? I can't find any evidence that housing size, above some minimum[1], is correlated with happiness. See e.g.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45420795#:~:text=The%20US%2Dbased%20study%20draws,does%20not%20come%20without%20costs https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45420795#:~:text=The%20U....
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-016-9732-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-016-9732-2
or do you own search.
This desire for extremely large houses just seems to be a combination of prior expectations that houses will be large and status seeking. Expectations can adjust over time and I don't put much value on status seeking.
[1] The BBC article lists "4 rooms per occupant" as the threshold beyond which there is no increase in satisfaction.
- likpok 6y ago4 rooms per occupant is huge. Consider a 3/3 with a kitchen, dining room and living room. For 4 people (two kids and two parents) you have 9 rooms, or a little over 2 per person. This family would need to double their house size before maxing out.
- noelwelsh 6y agoYes, I misinterpreted the article. I assumed it was 4 rooms that each occupant could access, including shared rooms such as living rooms. A better summary is: * moving to a larger house leads to a small increase in "housing satisfaction" in most cases; * houses larger than 4 rooms per occupant bring no increase in satisfaction with increasing size.