Not dead yet!

“Sara Birtwhistle and Wendy Ellis are the faces of the future. No longer will a typical Australian family comprise mum, dad and two children,” went the introduction.

What, never again? I know same sex couples should no longer fear the sort of social pariah status of recent history, but I didn’t know they were soon going to be made compulsory. (The stats also say otherwise - of all couples, heterosexual couples still comprise 99.5 per cent of couples). Quoting one of the couple in the article:

"We've lived in an apartment in the Valley and New Farm since we've been together, which is 11 years," she says. "It's a nice lifestyle with good restaurants, cultural facilities and like-minded people who inhabit the area.

"Being stuck in the middle of suburbia with families gives me the heebie-jeebies."

How awful! But the reality is that family units are not in decline anywhere near the extent predicted. This has some implications not just for housing styles, but also for ownership.

The Australia Parliamentary Library earlier this year produced an interesting summary (PDF 328KB) of home ownership trends by family types. It concluded that:

One of the main demographic influences on home ownership is age. Rates of home ownership increase progressively with age, reflecting the different life cycle stages. The relationship between age and home ownership has meant that Australia’s ageing population has put upward pressure on the home ownership rate.

On the other hand it says:

Another demographic influence on home ownership is household composition. Rates of home ownership above the average for all households have been experienced by couple families while rates below the average have been experienced by one parent families and lone person households. Changes in the composition of Australian households from couple families to other family types have therefore acted to put downward pressure on the home ownership rate.

The reason for the latter is that non traditional household types are more likely to rent than own (with or without mortgage). But then it concludes:

Given the wide variety of factors that influence home ownership, their net effect has been, surprisingly, to leave Australia’s home ownership rate largely unchanged for more than 40 years.

That tends to support a largely status quo situation in terms of household composition. What is true, however, is that households are getting smaller. In 1960, the average household was 3.5 persons. It’s now about 2.7 persons. Some commentators have seized on that fact to predict (or more frequently, proclaim) that housing should get smaller, not larger. (The derision of so called suburban McMansions often raises this as its justification).