Impact of income inequality on low-income housing affordability in selected metropolises of Iran

Housing is one of the most critical and expensive assets of human life, and it is a costly commodity that requires long-term planning. A major issue in the housing sector is affordability, especially for low-income families. In this paper, we combine the cross-sectional household income-expenditure microdata (generated by the Iranian Statistics Center) and create pseudo-panel data. We make cohorts from the repeated cross-sectional data and examine family behavior for 25 years. This study was conducted from 1991 to 2015 and covered seven metropolises including Tehran, Karaj, Mashhad, Isfahan, Tabriz, Shiraz, and Ahwaz. The target population of this study consisted of those who were born from 1930 to1989. Because rich people make more speculative investment in housing than their need, this behavior affects the housing market and low-income households through the intensification of income inequality. The empirical results demonstrate that the high per capita income inequality of households in metropolises has a negative and significant effect on residual income (i.e. non-housing expenses) and per capita living space. That is, higher income inequality is related to a lower residual income and a lower per capita living space. The results also show that permanent income has a positive and significant effect on housing affordability, and higher permanent income leads to an increase in residual income as well as an increase in per capita living space.