Re: subprpime suburbs
On Mar 23, 2007, at 10:05 AM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
One thing that really defies my understanding of this country is
why on earth even the poorest schmuck insists of individual home ownership
Roediger has an interesting chapter on that issue in his latest
whiteness book - owning a house was an important part of the
whitening process for the southern and eastern European immigrants in
the early 20th century. It often meant a tremendous financial
sacrifice, but they didn’t care.
The other day, Michael Perelman pointed to a paper by Andrew Oswald
homeownership and unemployment rates for a number of European
countries (high homeownership = high unemployment, that is) - and
almost none at all beteen unemployment and wage rates or welfare
state generosity. He theorized that this was because ownership
limited mobility, but Americans think nothing of selling a house and
moving 2000 miles, so I’m not convinced by this. But it’s interesting
that the countries with the highest ownership rates are on the
periphery, historically poorer countries like Ireland and Spain, and
the lowest are at the core, like Germany. The state with the highest
homeownership rate in the U.S. is West Virginia, which is our own
internal periphery.
Doug