R I C K R O W D E N

Blocking Progress: The IMF and HIV/AIDS

In many low-income countries, HIV/AIDS activists and broader networks of public health and education advocates have been increasingly frustrated by the inability of their countries to spend more on the public health and education systems generally, and on the additional doctors, nurses and teachers projected to be needed to fight HIV/AIDS effectively or achieve other Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. The Joint Learning Initiative on Human Resources for Health and Development, a global study of health workforces, found that to provide the essential health interventions required to achieve the MDGs will require Africa to increase its health workforce by at least 1m additional doctors, nurses, and midwives over the current level of 600,000 health care workers. [START_REF]Joint Learning Initiative on Human Resources for Health and Development, Human Resources for Health: Overcoming the Crisis[END_REF] A similar study by the World Health Organization found that for essential health services to be provided, sub-Saharan Africa needs a total of 2.5m additional health care workers. [START_REF]Preventing and Treating HIV/AIDS in Poor Countries will Help Deliver Better Health Services through 2005 and Beyond[END_REF] Yet such spending increases are not at all possible under the current economic policy choices. Most health and education ministries only have the budgets granted by their finance ministries, and in turn, the finance ministries explain that budgets are in line with the fiscal and monetary policy targets agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Most low-income countries are under pressure to stay 'on track' with their IMF programs, as its essential for also accessing World Bank money or aid from the other major multilateral or bilateral donors and creditors. By playing such a gatekeeper role to all other foreign aid, the IMF's 'signal effect' has given it tremendous power beyond the amount of money in its loans. The fundamental problem is that under current IMF policy choices and spending constraints, many countries will not be able to increase expenditures or public investment in line with what is projected to be needed to fight HIV/AIDS or achieve the MDGs.

A flashpoint of controversy in recent years has been over the IMF's use of ceilings or caps on the wages for all public sector employees in the budget as among its binding loan conditions. When enforced, the national wage bill ceilings consequently constrain the levels of wages available for each of the sector budgets, including for health personnel. Therefore, even when donors are willing to finance personnel costs, such as increased salaries or new health care worker posts, countries may be prevented from using such funds because of the IMF's spending limits on wages. As the wage ceilings have made planning for ambitious scaling-up of health personnel all but impossible, the IMF has become a lightening rod for unwanted attention. The same is true for education advocates seeking to hire more teachers. [START_REF]Confronting the Contradictions: The IMF, Wage Bill Caps and the Case for Teachers[END_REF] In 2004, the IMF wage bill ceiling collided with a bold UK initiative to fund Malawi's national Emergency Human Resources Plan, an important step that broke with common donor practice by funding the recurrent expenses associated with increasing salaries of domestic health care workers and creating new posts. When the IMF objected, it was negotiated and finally agreed the wage ceiling could be lifted to accommodate the money spent on personnel if done slowly over six years. Recently, the IMF has attempted to placate critics with a July 2007 claim it will now back away from its widespread use of the wage ceilings, but may still use them as it deems necessary. [START_REF]IMF Executive Board Discusses Operational Implications of Aid Inflows for IMF Advice and Program Design in Low-Income Countries[END_REF] Unfortunately, both the ingenuity shown by the UK to spend on wages and the 'flexibility' on wage ceilings by the IMF in the Malawi case are the exceptions and not the rule. Generally, aid donors are unwilling to commit funds for recurrent wages, and the IMF reinforces this by raising concerns about potential macroeconomic problems that could result from entering into longterm expenditure commitments without long-term donor commitments to finance them. Donors should, however, follow the UK's enlightened lead by planning for longer-term aid commitments and making resources explicitly available for personnel salaries.

WHAT DO FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICIES HAVE TO DO WITH GETTING MORE DOCTORS, NURSES AND TEACHERS HIRED?

Although the wage bill ceilings have been the focus of much attention and ire, and the unpredictability of future donor aid commitments is also a legitimate concern, both are merely symptoms of the deeper underlying problem of chronically insufficient national and sector budgets generally. Keeping wages constrained is just a subset of the larger IMF goal of reducing or keeping overall national public expenditure constrained. The two key policies used to achieve this goal are the fiscal policy (deficit-reduction targets) and monetary policy (inflation-reduction targets) in the macroeconomic framework of the IMF loan programs.

These two policies can directly impact the GDP growth rate for the whole economy (and thus the amount of taxes raised and public expenditure available) and how much foreign aid can be absorbed and spent in a year. HIV/AIDS, health and education advocates who are trying to get more doctors, nurses and teachers hired must understand how these two key fiscal and monetary policies will be essential to achieving their advocacy goals for increased public expenditure.

The main two problems are that the IMF's unnecessarily restrictive deficitreduction and inflation-reduction targets are creating a monumental bottleneck that is preventing countries from: (1) being able to fully utilize all of the increasing levels of foreign aid that have become available in recent years; and, (2) being able to generate higher levels of expenditure domestically.

Regarding not fully using available donor aid, an April 2007 study of 29 sub-Saharan African countries by the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office found that over 70% of the donor aid increases given to the countries between 1999-2005 was redirected into building international currency reserves at the central bank or paying down domestic debt in order to meet the strict IMF monetary policies, while only 28% was actually allowed to be spent as intended by donors. 5 A recent study by the Washington, DC-based Center for Global Development also found that donor aid flows for global health were being undermined by IMF policies that are unnecessarily restrictive. [START_REF]Does the IMF Constrain Health Spending in Poor Countries? Evidence and an Agenda for Action[END_REF] Regarding not generating higher domestic expenditure, the IMF advises countries to raise short-term interest rates in order to lower inflation, but this can have the negative side-effect of slowing down GDP growth rates, employment and public spending. Therefore, there is a trade-off in which the IMF prefers to sacrifice higher GDP growth and spending in order to get lower inflation.

Serious health and education advocates today have no choice but to wade into the murky world of abstract debates about the degree of restrictiveness of the IMF's fiscal and monetary targets, how they impact the size of national budgets in poor countries, and possible alternatives.

No one wants policies that are too 'loose' or lead to large budget deficits or high inflation rates, or policies that are too 'tight' or unnecessarily restrictive, as these can constrain optimally higher GDP growth rates and public spending levels. In between these two extremes are what economists call 'the gray area', or a range of still feasible alternative options that could allow for differing degrees of public expenditure and restraint. The IMF does not like to talk about the existence of this range of alternatives.

Examples of possible 'gray area' alternatives were highlighted in an Oxfam International report that took IMF deficit-reduction targets for a set of countries and suggested hypothetical projections for how much more public spending countries could have engaged in had they been allowed to pay down their deficits more slowly. The outcomes were striking, in some cases enabling a doubling of health and education sector budgets. [START_REF]The IMF and the Millennium Goals: Failing to Deliver for Low-Income Countries[END_REF] Each option within this 'gray area' range of feasible alternatives has its own short-term and long-term costs and benefits, all of which could be discussed, assessed and debated by key public stakeholders, such as health and education ministry staff, relevant legislative committees and civil society. However, in most low-income countries, such inclusive discussions of ranges of alternative policy scenarios have not been the case. Usually the IMF meets periodically with central bank and finance ministry officials from borrowing countries behind closed doors, where it insists on extremely restrictive policies. The problem is that the IMF insists its preference is the only option, and officials tend to go along with this.

YEARS OF RESTRICTIVE SPENDING POLICIES

The IMF's position has become the dominant orthodoxy in development economics, but this was not always the case. In the early 1980s, former US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher transformed the IMF and World Bank by eliminating the Keynesian economists, who believed in a key role for the state in modulating economic policies, and replaced these staff with the neoliberal economists who favored free trade and free markets over state intervention. At the IMF in particular, a subset of neoliberal economists called 'monetarists' rose in ascendancy, who believed that inflation is always unacceptable and that budget deficits should not be allowed. At this time, such extremely restrictive fiscal and monetary policies were viewed as just one very conservative option along a range of other feasible possible policies, but as years went by, the IMF's position has gained dominance and is today widely believed to be the only option available to countries.

For over 25 years, leading think-tanks, university departments, textbook publishers and corporate media have contributed to the perception that extremely restrictive fiscal and monetary policies are not only 'sound' and 'prudent', but also that they are the only option. (The dominance of these ideas has remained true despite the apparent hypocrisy of rich countries, who still freely adopt more expansionary monetary policies or countercyclical fiscal policies when needed, but who do not allow developing countries to do so.) Key tenets of the monetarism that informs IMF policies include that fiscal deficits must be paid down to very low levels very quickly and that inflation rates must be driven down into at least the 5% to 7% range in order to constitute 'macroeconomic stability'. However, this definition of stability is contradicted by much other published research in the peer-reviewed economics literature, which shows that moderately higher budget deficits and inflation rates do not necessarily constitute 'instability'.

Public health and education advocates should know and use this informationthat the IMF does not have the last word. They must step up investment in macroeconomic literacy trainings for civil society, key legislative committee members, health and education ministry staff and the media.

In borrowing countries, such training is essential for enabling advocates to more forcefully engage with their finance ministries about what is being agreed to with the IMF. Advocates must create public spaces where the options for alternative, more expansionary spending policies can be publicly discussed, debated and assessed, and in a transparent and accountable way that can be done before the finance ministries sign on to future IMF loan programs.

IF YOU'RE GOING TO SCALE-UP, YOU'LL NEED THE FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICIES TO MATCH

Global advocacy networks are increasingly pressuring the IMF to change. An example of this mounting pressure was expressed in an October 2007 global NGO sign-on letter to Dominique Strauss-Khan, the incoming IMF Managing Director, in which 125 organizations called on him to change these unnecessarily restrictive policies that undermine developing countries' ability to increase health and education spending. 8 Because the richest countries dominate politics on the IMF Executive Board, health and education advocates in the rich countries are also calling on their governments to use their influence at the IMF to make formalized policy changes and instruct staff to allow for looser fiscal and monetary policies.

Critics of the monetarist policies introduced by Reagan and Thatcher had fought against them in the 1980s and 1990s, and lost both times. But today, the global imperative to fight HIV/AIDS effectively and meet the MDGs presents a new factor in the equation. The current policy incoherence of trying to both scale-up spending with one hand while letting the IMF restrict spending with the other is becoming increasingly untenable for growing numbers of advocates who are demanding results.

The same over-zealous spending restraint that has been a hallmark of the monetarists for 25 years may also end up being their Achilles heel in today's changing world, which is eager to see scaled-up public spending. In this sense, the persistent political demands of emerging global social movements for health and education may end up signaling the beginning of the end for the reign of the monetarists at the IMF. If they keep pushing, these movements can help open the way for use of the more expansionary fiscal and monetary policies likely to be needed to enable a significant scaling-up of public investments in health, education and other national development goals in lowincome countries.

  notes

Global Social Policy 8[START_REF]Joint Learning Initiative on Human Resources for Health and Development, Human Resources for Health: Overcoming the Crisis[END_REF]


R Ay F O R R E S T

Globalization and the Housing Asset Rich Geographies, Demographies and Policy Convoys

Keywords: assets, globalization, home ownership, wealth

This article explores the importance of housing assets in shaping the global landscape of opportunity and disadvantage. In doing so, it is concerned with four key issues. First, it seeks to highlight the increasing significance of housing related wealth at a global scale. Second, it is concerned with the uneven and potentially divisive impact of housing asset accumulation, within and between societies. Third, it seeks to show how economic, geo-demographic and policy contexts combine to produce different outcomes for different population cohorts. Fourth, it discusses the way in which more market driven housing systems and housing wealth accumulation are changing the social policy environment. The underlying argument of the article is that the dynamics of housing markets and housing assets are of growing significance in relation to contemporary patterns of risk, opportunity, vulnerability and privilege and need to be embraced more thoroughly in social policy debate.

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Introduction

This article explores the importance of housing assets in shaping the global landscape of opportunity and disadvantage. In doing so, it is concerned with four key issues. First, it seeks to highlight the increasing significance of housing related wealth at a global scale. Second, it is concerned with the uneven and potentially divisive impact of housing asset accumulation, within and between societies. Third, it seeks to show how economic, geo-demographic and policy contexts combine to produce different outcomes for different population cohorts. Fourth, it discusses the way in which more market driven housing systems and housing wealth accumulation are changing the social policy environment.

Underlying the argument is a view that home ownership status can be seen as a pivotal element of asset based, economic citizenship -the ability to participate in what [START_REF] Boyer | The Political in the era of Globalization and Finance: Focus on some Regulation School Research[END_REF] has referred to as 'property led regimes' -a pervasive financialization of social life in which the ability to deploy directly or indirectly housing assets (which for most homeowners constitutes their key wealth holding) is crucial to participation in consumption. Conversely, those excluded or on the margins of housing asset accumulation are increasingly disadvantaged.

The general context is one in which, internationally, housing provision has become more market based and these transformations in the housing sector are symptomatic of a contemporary globalization that has been shaped by neoliberal imperatives. Processes of deregulation, re-regulation, privatization and financial liberalization and the changing role of government in public and social policy have reflected an ideological and policy shift in the interests of corporate capitalism. And in the ever-expanding literature on globalization, it is the scale and velocity of financial flows around the globe that are among the least contested features of this new global age. Investment in real estate is a significant part of this global financial system accounting for a substantial proportion of bank lending in most developed countries [START_REF] Zhu | The Importance of Property Markets for Monetary Policy and Fiscal Stability[END_REF]. Greater reliance on indirect and regulatory interventions, and on private financial institutions to facilitate market based forms of housing provision means that housing systems are now more intimately embedded in a global economy and in an institutional structure in which global institutions exert greater influence [START_REF] Forrest | Globalisation, Governance and the Housing Market[END_REF].

More generally, the relationship between national governments and national housing systems has changed. The reduction, sometimes substantial, of direct housing provision has diminished state capacities to respond as effectively as in the past to the shifting housing needs and demands of populations. It follows from this that national housing systems, which are increasingly shaped by, and dependent on, private institutions are also more intimately connected to the global economy and potentially more vulnerable to economic and political turbulence beyond national boundaries. The governance of housing systems has also become more internationalized, privatized and preoccupied with asset management and the monitoring of institutional and individual risk. National housing policy remains focused on issues of homelessness, slumification and the problems of those unable to access housing via the market. But in the global scheme of things, the main business is elsewhere, in a world of housing as assets, of financial flows to and from households and between institutions and in the regulatory framework set up to manage the risks associated with this ever-expanding investment in the residential sphere. Local housing markets and individual households are caught up in these processes to varying degrees and with varying consequences.

These developments have important implications for social policy on a number of dimensions. These include the challenge to address divisions between the asset rich and asset poor, at different spatial scales; debates around taxation and home ownership gains; new vulnerabilities to household indebtedness; the role of housing equity in more privatized welfare systems; and the need to conceptualize patterns of economic and social advantage and disadvantage in more familial and intergenerational terms. BACKGROUND Interest in the social and economic impact of rising home ownership rates has a longstanding history in both policy and academic debate. Analysis has ranged across the impact of changes in patterns of housing provision on spatial mobility and societal cohesion [START_REF] Rossi | Why People Move[END_REF], new social fissures conceptualized as housing classes [START_REF] Moore | Race, Community and Conflict[END_REF], divisions between renters and owners conceived as new consumption sector cleavages [START_REF] Dunleavy | The Growth of Sectoral Cleavages and the Stabilisation of State Expenditure[END_REF][START_REF] Saunders | Domestic Property and Social Class[END_REF] and the socio-spatial impacts of housing wealth accumulation (Forrest and Murie, 1995). The exploration of these and related issues has had, however, a very uneven geographical focus and has waxed and waned with shifting economic conditions. Geographically and culturally, the literature has also had a strong Anglo-Saxon tinge with British, Australasian and to a lesser extent, US researchers being most preoccupied with the socio-economic dimensions of housing tenure change -particularly in periods of rapid house price inflation. Part of the explanation for this lies in the established and mature nature of home ownership sectors in countries such as the UK and the USA.

Patterns of housing provision vary substantially across societies and the underlying factors for these historical and contemporary differences is a separate and well-developed debate (see [START_REF] Harloe | The People's Home?[END_REF][START_REF] Kemeny | The Myth of Home Ownership[END_REF]. More recent work in this field has looked increasingly to welfare regime theory for the underlying conceptual framework for understanding historical trajectories in the development of housing tenures (Kurz and Blossfeld, 2004). This discussion, however, lies outside the main concerns of this article. What is relevant is that such attempts to conceptualize housing provision patterns as an aspect of welfare regime theory have drawn housing closer to mainstream debates in social policy, sociology and economics. There is now widespread recognition of the social and transformative potential of mortgage based home ownership (see also [START_REF] Shapiro | The Hidden Cost of Being African-American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality[END_REF]. By transformative potential I am referring to both the positive and negative impacts of housing assets in relation to social stratification and social inequality, the distribution of wealth and its deployment within and between households and generations, the macro-economic consequences of remortgaging and equity release and the uneven spatial impact of these processes within cities, regions and globally.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HOUSING WITHIN POLICY DEBATE

It is somewhat paradoxical that while housing policy as welfare oriented social policy has become somewhat marginalized in recent years, concern with the dynamics of housing markets and housing-related social inequalities have moved to the forefront of international policy debate. This has happened for a number of reasons.

First, contemporary home ownership has penetrated new markets -albeit in hybridized and sometimes only partially marketized forms. The late 1980s saw the break up of the former Soviet Union and a rapid privatization of housing stocks and the drive towards monetized housing systems. A more recent, and probably more significant phase of marketization, has encompassed countries such as China and Vietnam. The growth of both privatized and commodified forms of home ownership and associated wealth accumulation among particular cohorts in these societies has been rapid and substantial and has contributed to significant new social divides within cities and between urban and rural areas. Moreover, housing reforms in societies such as China and Russia have been pursued as a pivotal element in achieving more fundamental social and economic transformations.

Second, while significant sections of the world's population have found themselves in relatively advantaged if highly differentiated positions in the residential housing sphere, millions of people have become more disadvantaged in terms of housing access and conditions. A neoliberal agenda, which has driven market reforms and which has generated new forms of wealth for some has profoundly disenfranchised others. Rising inequalities evident at a national or city scale can be observed at a global level. The magnitude of this chronic housing disadvantage is documented in the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UNHSP) report, The Challenge of Slums, which estimates that in 2001 some 32% of the world's urban population lived in slums. It is almost certain that slum dwellers increased substantially during the 1990s. It is further projected that in the next 30 years, the global number of slum dwellers will increase to about 2bn if no firm concrete action is taken (UNHSP, 2003: xxv).

The weakening of national governments, neoliberal ideology and its associated structural adjustment programmes have been key factors in this growth of slumification and urban poverty. Davis (2004: 27), in a characteristically evocative commentary on the UNHSP report, suggests that social theory is now challenged 'to grasp the novelty of a true global residuum lacking the strategic economic power of socialized labour, but massively concentrated in a shanty town world encircling the fortified enclaves of the urban rich'.

It is the urban rich -or at least the moderately and relatively housing asset rich -that are the focal point of the third key element of housing's strategically important position in current policy debates. From some perspectives it would appear that much of the health of the global economy is finely balanced on the unpredictable undulations of the residential property market and on the spending and savings behaviour of individual homeowners. Nationally and globally the interaction between housing markets and the wider macro economy has become a major preoccupation. The 2004 International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook referred to a 'global house price boom' with apparently synchronized and unusually high house price rises across many industrial countries. Moreover, it suggested that the explanation for house price rises nationally lies to varying degrees with global factors rather than country specific or idiosyncratic factors.

A key implication of this finding is that just as the upswing in house prices has been a global phenomenon, it is likely that any downturn would also be highly synchronized, with corresponding implications for global economic activity (IMF, 2004: 71).

Such concerns were brought to the fore with the onset and aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis in which collapsing property markets were deeply implicated [START_REF] Herring | Real Estate Booms and Banking Busts: An International Perspective[END_REF].

Rising real estate values and cheap borrowing have been important factors in sustaining consumer spending in a number of countries during recent economic downturns (Bank for International Settlements, 2002). In relation to the US economy, [START_REF] Deep | Housing Markets and Economic Growth: Lessons from the US Refinancing Boom[END_REF] observed that:

Mortgage refinancing seems to have played a significant role in keeping US consumption unusually buoyant through the recent downturn. Assuming that 54% of refinanced mortgages generated a net cash payout and that the full median appreciation of property refinanced in 2001 of $25,000 was cashed out, one arrives at an estimate of $150 billion of discretionary cash flow from household equity extraction. (Deep and Domanski, 2002: 3) Similarly, Brenner (2004: 81) calculated that cash outs, second mortgages and other housing related spending 'accounted, in total, for no less than twothirds of [US] GDP growth between 2000 and the first half of 2003'. Essentially, the equity or borrowing capacity represented by residential property has grown in significance globally and can be deployed to substantial and unpredictable economic effect at different spatial scales.

The social implications of these developments have also gained wider recognition. The distribution of household wealth, the potential to 'spend' housing equity, patterns of inter-vivos transfer, intergenerational transmission and the manner of its acquisition are seen as increasingly important in the shaping of contemporary social divisions and life chances. Spilerman (2000a) suggests that the neglect of wealth in social stratification has had both a conceptual and empirical basis. Social analysts have focused on rewards from the labour market and on earned income as the key determinant of life chances and social status. Where wealth has been studied it has tended to be restricted to elite studies because of its skewed concentration in the hands of privileged minorities. Wealth dispersion, however, largely associated with the growth of home ownership means that 'considerations of family asset holdings have become increasingly relevant to general stratification analysis, aside from their long-established salience in elite studies' (Spilerman, 2000a: 499). In a similar vein Kurz and Blossfeld (2004: 1) state that 'Although home ownership is the most important form of family wealth -it greatly affects both the living conditions and financial security of households -it has rarely been the topic of social stratification research'.

From a social policy perspective, such concerns shift the focus on social advantage or disadvantage from the individual to the family, to the total resources that can be deployed and to more broad based analyses of lifestyles and consumption patterns rather than mere economic calculations. In doing so, it is also necessary to have a cohort and life course perspective on the achievement of home ownership. In other words, who you are, where you are and when you achieve home ownership are critical determinants of future trajectories.

It is also important to emphasise that some homeowners are considerably more asset rich than others and there is ample evidence to show that equity can rapidly become negative or eroded for unlucky cohorts caught in a recession [START_REF] Forrest | Coping Strategies, Housing Careers and Households with Negative Equity[END_REF]; for a more general discussion of housing market risk, see also [START_REF] Boelhouwer | Playing Snakes and Ladders: Gains and Losses for Home Owners[END_REF]. Moreover, there is as always considerable uncertainty about the current state of the global property market with predictions of a serious 'adjustment' in house prices [START_REF] Economist | Come the Waves[END_REF]. However, notwithstanding the vicissitudes of residential property markets and the evident differentiation within home ownership sectors (see [START_REF] Forrest | Home Ownership: Fragmentation and Differentiation[END_REF][START_REF] Hirayama | Running Hot and Cold in the Urban Home Ownership Market: The Experience of Japan's Major Cities[END_REF], in the global scheme of things, home ownership has become an important dimension of an economic citizenship in which those with housing assets can enhance earned income directly and indirectly to sustain consumption, lifestyles and social status and are often better placed to weather adverse economic circumstances.

Geographies of Accumulation

The divisions between (and within) the housing asset rich and the housing asset poor can be conceived of at different spatial scales to evoke a multilayered and intertwined geography of advantage and disadvantage. At a global level the article has already alluded to the major divide between populations, which is reflected in two parallel and apparently disconnected debates. On the one hand the borrowing capacity and behaviour of large swathes of (particularly) US homeowners has helped sustain their prodigious consumption of energy and imported goods from around the world. On the other hand, trade liberalization, structural adjustment programmes and the general application of neoliberal ideologies have worsened housing and living conditions in much of Africa, Central Asia and parts of Latin America (United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2003). The starkest divide is therefore between the growing numbers of chronically housing disadvantaged on the margins of survival in cities such as Manila or Mexico City and the masses of homeowners in major cities of Europe, Australasia, East Asia and North America -a discourse of poverty and subsistence in the former and one of price, equity and wealth in the latter.

At a different spatial scale we can conceive of these housing wealth divisions at a regional or city level. This draws on Fielding's conception of 'escalator regions' [START_REF] Fielding | Migration and Social Mobility: The South-East as an Escalator Region[END_REF] where he was referring to those regions (in his case specifically London and the South East) in which there was a critical and growing mass of the professional and new middle classes, expanding highincome employment and rapidly growing house prices. Work in a similar vein has shown the role of the Paris region on social advancement and mobility compared to the rest of France [START_REF] Lelievre | A Compared Cohort History of Residential Mobility, Social Change and Home Ownership in Paris and the Rest of France[END_REF]. Escalator regions offer potentially rapid ascent up the employment, housing and status ladder. Moreover, getting off the escalator can be problematic and risk loss of employment or housing market position -once disembarked it may prove difficult to get on again. For example, a move to a lower cost city or region can bring immediate material benefits and a better standard of living but re-entry to the escalator region can prove extremely difficult if regional housing costs continue to diverge.

This metaphor can be extended to encompass escalator cities and regions globally and to suggest a cumulative and interconnected set of advantages for those with the necessary employment and social credentials to be residents of those privileged enclaves. The most obvious candidates are the familiar global cities of London, Sydney, Tokyo and the emergent ones such as Shanghai or Beijing. Shiller (2005: 106) refers to the 'glamour' cities such as Moscow, Paris and Sydney. 'These cities boomed in the late 1980s, crashed in the early 1990s and then boomed again. Real house prices are now almost twice what they were in 1997.' He suggests that factors such as international terrorism, financial scandals associated with major corporations and a loss of confidence in stock markets have combined to channel funds into the 'tangible assets' such as real estate. And the most desirable real estate is found in the most fashionable cities.

Of course, it is in precisely these locations where prices are at their most volatile and where rampant booms can be followed by dramatic busts [START_REF] Forrest | Home Ownership and Economic Change in Japan[END_REF][START_REF] Ley | Immigration, Globalisation and House Prices in Canada's Gateway Cities[END_REF]. It is not the case, therefore, that such lead cities offer an uncomplicated and unrelenting upward escalator of house price appreciation. Nevertheless, it is in such cities where the opportunities for extraordinary housing asset appreciation are at their greatest, contingent on timing and location. [START_REF] Ley | Immigration, Globalisation and House Prices in Canada's Gateway Cities[END_REF], for example, have shown how the price trajectories of Toronto and Vancouver became progressively decoupled from the other main metropolitan areas of Canada through their greater integration into the global economy. The growth of professional and managerial employment, substantial immigration (often high-income in the case of Vancouver) and overseas investment in real estate, particularly from East Asia, were all factors contributing to more intense house price inflation in these cities. Ley and Tutchener (2001: 220) comment that 'Price movements in Toronto and Vancouver show geographical and historical synchronicity with globalising trends'.

These escalator opportunities are not, however, confined to the usual suspects of global and world cities. New fashionable niches are constantly emerging in a real estate market that has an increasingly global reach for mobile capital, mobile elites and offers enhanced housing asset appreciation for middle-class professionals who happen to be resident in these emerging glamour spots. Gentrification has thus taken on global dimensions, it has been 'generalized' [START_REF] Smith | New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy[END_REF], with internationally oriented real estate corporations identifying the up and coming cities and regions for wise investors. A report from Jones Lang LaSalle ( 2003) refers to city winners, which are the rising urban stars of the future.

'First mover advantage' is a term that will increasingly resonate in the real estate community. We predict that the property markets will see new kinds of players: occupiers and investors keen to capture the energy and potential of Rising Urban Stars. (Jones Lang LaSalle, 2003: 1) Of the 24 emerging winners which Jones Lang LaSalle suggest are strong investment opportunities for developers and individuals, eight are in China and three in India. The 'rising mega cities' Beijing, Shanghai and Mumbai are predictable inclusions. Xian and Chongqing are 'new frontiers' of economic dynamism. Good bets for property appreciation are 'the urban sustainable' cities of Calgary and Copenhagen and the 'resort/urban hip locations' of Barcelona and SE Queensland. Bangalore, Dalian and Tallinn are promising centres of 'rising technology' and Raleigh-Durham (North Carolina) is 'technology rich'. The extent to which such investment advice translates into pockets of enhanced/above average accumulation only time will tell. There is, however, clearly an element of self-realizing expectation in all this.

There are also escalator neighbourhoods -those pockets within cities where house prices outstrip the average. Hirayama's recent work on Tokyo [START_REF] Hirayama | Running Hot and Cold in the Urban Home Ownership Market: The Experience of Japan's Major Cities[END_REF] shows an increasing disconnectedness between general price trajectories and the rising values of properties in the high status condominium areas of the central city -a trend spreading to other major Japanese cities and also evident in other parts of East Asia such as Seoul, Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur (for a general commentary see for example DTZ Research, 2005). Hirayama suggests that 'Increasingly differentiated ups and downs in the housing market have fragmented urban space' (Hirayama, 2005: 18). Similarly, research on Hong Kong's housing market has shown the uneven trajectory of house price appreciation across different price sectors. Those in the most expensive neighbourhoods and properties experienced substantially higher rates of appreciation in the period 1986 to 2001, and when prices fell in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis were still in a position of having made much higher absolute gains than those in the cheaper properties and neighbourhoods.

These pockets of hyperappreciation, typically in the most fashionable districts of the most globally connected cities, can also create striking examples of households that are asset rich and income poor. Low-income households caught up in these new waves of residential investment can find themselves pushed into the high wealth categories. For example, France's wealth tax has increasingly encompassed households with very limited incomes and with few assets other than a high value property. Some of these nominally wealthy households are so poor they are exempt from income tax [START_REF] Guardian | Wealth tax Hits Poor Pensioners of Paris[END_REF]. And while these property hot spots in Paris and other French cities have experienced soaring prices fuelled by the residential preferences of rich minorities, real disposable incomes have generally been falling. This is, of course, a variation on the gentrification and displacement theme and leaving aside the social disruptions and individual stress experienced in such circumstances, one might observe that asset rich/income poor is perhaps preferable to asset poor/income poor -better to be caught up in gentrification than comprehensively passed by? In the latter situation there is little scope to exercise choice of any kind.

A deregulated, re-regulated and privatized public policy environment has also facilitated spillover effects between national housing markets in terms of investment and price inflation. The growth of budget air travel across Europe has enabled the housing asset rich in high inflation housing markets to deploy resources in lower housing cost areas to buy second homes as lifestyle accessories and/or income generating investments. This has been evident among British homeowners where even those on modest incomes and with modestly valued properties have been able to take advantage of much cheaper property prices in places such as France or Spain, thus fuelling secondary property booms.

There are numerous other examples of these spillover effects facilitated by cheaper international mobility. For example, some 15% of real estate sales in Florida in 2004-5 were to individual purchasers from 100 different countries, 58% from Europe with UK buyers representing the majority (National Association of Realtors, 2005: 19). National and local housing policy agendas are thus increasingly affected by these transnational flows with more intense competition for the most desirable residential locations. Moreover, this globalized competition for urban space is often explicitly aided and abetted by national and local governments seeking to position their cities more securely in the global status hierarchy and to attract key corporate investors and professional migrants [START_REF] Smith | New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy[END_REF].

The implications for social policy of these developments is of a more volatile, divisive and often fine-grained spatial dimension to social inequalities in which housing wealth plays a key role. In the property hot spots, global influences are increasingly important in shaping the asset base of both households and institutions and in circumscribing the available policy options for local governments. In other words, housing asset rich regions or enclaves expand the potential tax bases for governments and the range of welfare choices for households, arguably supporting more market based options.

Demographies, Divisions and Cohorts

Housing asset accumulation thus has an uneven geography. This unevenness is then further crosscut by demographic, life course and cohort dimensions.

There is a substantial literature on housing and the life course. Some of this focuses on the relationship between savings and income over a lifetime. Other work, more grounded in social geography and social policy, is concerned inter alia with the degree to which housing career trajectories or pathways vary from one cohort to the next and the explanations for such variations (e.g. [START_REF] Myers | Cohort Longitudinal Estimation of Housing Careers[END_REF]. More complexity still is added with comparative studies that explore the variations among similar cohorts in different countries. In the main, such research focuses on housing tenure histories, the achievement of home ownership and the timing of purchase, which varies significantly across different societies. In countries such as the UK, Canada and the USA entry to home ownership has tended to come at an early age whereas in, for example, Italy and Spain first time purchasers have often been in their late 30s [START_REF] Chiuri | Financial Market Imperfections and Home Ownership: A Comparative Study[END_REF]. Explanations for these differences lie in varying demographic patterns, tax regimes, subsidy structures, mortgage regulations, cultural differences in household formation patterns as well as socialization and differing social conventions and expectations. What such studies are generally not able to show (usually because the data are not available) is how housing asset wealth is demographically distributed intra and internationally across different age cohorts. In other words what is the demographic distribution of the housing asset rich?

The general pattern is that housing equity increases with age as mortgages are paid off. Younger home owning households have a higher share of total incomes but a lower share of housing wealth. Thus, housing wealth tends to be increasing as incomes decline. However, such aggregate calculations do not reveal whether housing equity accumulation at the individual household level within each age cohort displays substantial variations over time and space. How is the life course cross cut by house price cycles and changing economic conditions (the timing of purchase), location of purchase (escalator city or neighbourhood) and affected by factors such as the relative sizes of different birth cohorts? These are complex interactions that have been explored to some degree by authors such as [START_REF] Myers | Cohort Longitudinal Estimation of Housing Careers[END_REF] and [START_REF] Deileman | Panel Data in Housing Research: A Reaction to the Paper by Myers on Cohort Longitudinal Estimation of Housing Careers[END_REF]. A specific example of such variations in timing is shown by data on Northern Ireland where younger households who entered the market between 1995 and 2000 experienced rapid equity gains compared to the previous and (probably) subsequent cohorts:

It may seem that 66 per cent equity ownership is quite high for younger households, which have not had enough time in the housing market to clear a significant portion of their mortgage debt. However, the house price boom between 1995 and 2000 dramatically altered loan-to-value ratios among mortgagees, bestowing on them large windfall gains in equity value. (Fahey and Maitre, 2004: 296) This example links to one of the more striking contemporary housing developments across a number of societies: namely, the declining rate of home ownership among younger age cohorts. Kurz and Blossfeld (2004: 370), found a 'growing delay in the transition to owner occupancy in France, Denmark and Spain'. Rates in Japan among younger age cohorts have fallen steadily and dramatically since the mid 1980s [START_REF] Forrest | Home Ownership and Economic Change in Japan[END_REF]. A similar process is evident in the UK, traditionally a society in which the financial regime encouraged and enabled early access to home ownership among young people (Council for Mortgage Lenders, 2005). The explanation for these trends varies but there are a number of key factors at work in different combinations in different societies. Young people are staying longer in higher education and thus entering the labour market later. Paying for education has become more individualized meaning that more young people start work with substantial debts to pay off. Partly related to the previous two factors, marriage and childbirth are happening later in life which in many societies represent a key trigger point for house purchase. Greater uncertainties in the labour market are affecting the ability of younger people to commit themselves to long term financial commitments such as taking out a mortgage. Again, it is important to emphasise that there are significant variations in these developments and there may be important differences both within and across cohorts with a greater polarization of experiences and opportunities. While home ownership rates among younger cohorts may be declining, those younger households who do gain access to home ownership may be in increasingly housing asset privileged positions compared to their peers. Aggregate downward trends in home ownership among younger households may thus conceal sub-cohorts embarked on sharp upward wealth accumulating trajectories.

Parental financial circumstances and the ability to provide down payments for children for house purchase or pay off educational debt is creating greater contrasts between housing (and other) asset rich families and those with more limited resources to deploy. For example, initial access to London's home ownership market now requires a hefty deposit. Having wealthy parents or other family members has thus become increasingly important in providing direct financial assistance to achieve the first step on the rung of the housing ladder.

A number of studies also indicate that it is the upper echelons of the housing asset rich that are best placed (e.g. [START_REF] Gulbrandsen | Home Ownership and Social Inequality in Norway[END_REF], and have the greatest propensity [START_REF] Farlow | UK House Prices, Consumption and GDP in a Global Context[END_REF], to deploy such resources to enhance their own lifestyles and living standards and those of their offspring (and parents).

This may be in the form of drawing directly on housing equity for non-housing purposes, the ability to use housing assets as a significant credit platform, in relation to the expectations and likelihood of inheriting a dwelling and the value of the bequest. [START_REF] Rowlingson | Attitudes to Housing Assets and Inheritance[END_REF] study of housing and inheritance in the UK found that 'white owner-occupiers from the professional classes were the most likely to receive a bequest, especially one of much value'. Similarly, [START_REF] Spilerman | Parental Wealth and the Living Standards of Young Couples in Israel[END_REF] has demonstrated the interactions between family size, ethnicity and dwelling values in Israel. Israelis of European origin own more valuable dwellings than Israelis of North African heritage and have smaller families than the latter. The absence of a rental market in Israel combined with factors such as restrictions on currency transfers and overseas investments has made access to home ownership the principal means of wealth accumulation and a middle class lifestyle.

Since housing values have climbed more steeply than the inflation rate, the acquisition of a home shortly after marriage has meant a greater number of years in which a couple might grow its resource base. As a consequence, the possibility of early home ownership, facilitated by parental assistance, has operated to magnify the existing disparity between the resources of the poor and the more affluent, as family assets are transmitted from one generation to the next (Spilerman, 2000b: 12). A striking wealth cleavage is also apparent between black and white households in the USA, attributable in great part to differential access to home ownership, contrasting patterns of house price appreciation and racial contrasts in relation to parental resources [START_REF] Charles | The Transition to Home Ownership and the Black-White Wealth Gap[END_REF][START_REF] Oliver | Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality[END_REF][START_REF] Shapiro | The Hidden Cost of Being African-American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality[END_REF].

Policy Convoys

The means and extent of building up substantial amounts of housing equity is therefore about timing, location and being in an advantageous social position in a particular society. Many housing pathways meander across highly localized, investment backwaters of national economies. Others have more cosmopolitan trajectories across high accumulation enclaves in national and international residential space. All housing pathways are, however, shaped by the temporal and societal particularities of tax and subsidy regimes and the general policy environment. We can conceive of this policy dimension as a convoy in three senses. First, it is a convenient metaphor to convey the differential impacts on households who enter the housing market under varying policy circumstances (e.g. universal tax relief on mortgage interest, no tax relief, stringent inheritance tax encompassing home ownership, limited inheritance tax, capital gains, no capital gains, etc.). Second, it evokes the strong element of path dependency of both policy change and individual pathways. Where you get on the policy train may well have significant influence on your circumstances when you get off. And policy in one period will shape and limit options in the next. A good example here is the way in which mass state rental provision in one era provided the policy option for some governments for mass privatization through tenant purchase and related schemes in a subsequent policy era. Third, the policy train passes through a changing economic environment that can have major impacts on housing asset accumulation. [START_REF] Forrest | Cohort Effects, Differential Accumulation and Hong Kong's Volatile Housing Market[END_REF], for example, illustrate the highly differentiated accumulation trajectories of different cohorts in Hong Kong reflecting the undulations of the economic cycle. More generally, the Asian Financial Crisis rapidly changed individual circumstances particularly among those on the economic margins and those who had entered the housing market at its peak.

Taking a longer historical sweep, [START_REF] Lelievre | A Compared Cohort History of Residential Mobility, Social Change and Home Ownership in Paris and the Rest of France[END_REF]Bonvalet (1994: 1663), observe that for the French generations born between the two world wars, 'a difficult start' was followed by a period in which 'they benefited from the boom in state-subsidised housing and the new housing loans implemented in the 1950s'. Post-war baby boomers across a number of societies were assisted in similar ways through a combination of mass state housing provision and various low cost loans and general tax reliefs on mortgage interest. Cohorts who gained access to the high-quality state housing of the post-war period were then the main beneficiaries of privatization policies that transferred state housing assets at discounted prices to large sections of the formerly tenanted population. While younger cohorts have typically faced reduced direct state provision and more limited and targeted subsidies for home ownership, the baby boomers in many countries moved into the latter stages of the life course having doubly benefited from state provision and/or from generous indirect tax and subsidy regimes.

Privatization programmes in former state socialist societies had similar effects particularly among the previously privileged cadres or nomenklatura [START_REF] Davis | From Welfare Benefit to Capitalized Asset: The Re-Commodification of Residential Space in Urban China[END_REF][START_REF] Kosareva | Housing Privatization in the Russian Federation[END_REF]. It should be noted, however, that such policies have also contributed to significant asset cleavages particularly where mass privatization policies have transferred dwellings subject to decades of low rent, low maintenance and low quality housing policies. Housing privatization policies in China and Vietnam [START_REF] Schenk | Residents of Hanoi's Socialist Apartments: A Legacy of Continuity and Some Change After Vietnam's Economic Transition[END_REF] have been similarly uneven in their scope and economic impact. Rapidly appreciating assets for some may be burdensome liabilities for others.

In other parts of East Asia state orchestrated home ownership policies via Fordist institutions such as the Government Home Loan Corporation in Japan or the Hong Kong Housing Authority have enabled millions of households to gain a significant foothold on the housing asset ladder through low cost purchase schemes amidst rapidly escalating property values. New entrants in these and other societies, however, face a changing policy environment where post Asian Financial Crisis pressures, neoliberal orthodoxy and the pressures of globalization to maintain or enhance economic competitiveness have involved the fragmentation and privatization of such institutions.

To return then to the convoy analogy, there are some who do not join the home ownership convoy at all -the marginalized communities of the global north and south. There are those who have benefited from a combination of propitious economic conditions, real wage increases and periods of generous state support -the high accumulators. And there are those who may have accumulated housing equity but are in circumstances in which borrowing against that equity, or releasing the funds in some other way, has or may become as much a matter of necessity as choice. This latter point will be returned to later.

Housing Assets and the Shifting Terrain for Social Policy

In mature home ownership systems such as in Japan or the UK, older housing asset rich households may well depart the policy train with their assets relatively intact (or at least voluntarily deployed by choice for their own benefit or for the benefit of other family members). Cohorts that are further back in the convoy are, however, more likely to be caught between the pressures of the market and changes in state policies in which tax regimes may increasingly encompass housing wealth and involve a degree of compulsion in how that wealth is utilized in later life. At present few countries levy a wealth tax on housing -Spain, Sweden and Denmark being notable exceptions. This may change, however, as the equity stored in housing becomes irresistible to governments seeking new sources of tax revenue and fiscal savings. The evident accumulation of housing wealth among significant sections of populations has attracted the attention of policy makers seeking to fill pensions gaps, reduce the burden on state expenditures for care in old age or to boost consumption levels in depressed economies [START_REF] Nakagawa | Why has Japan's Household Savings Rate Remained High Even During the 1990s? Tokyo[END_REF]. The wealth gap opening up between renters and owners (National Center for Real Estate Research [NCRER], 2004) and the affordability gap between generations has also focused policy debate on possible ways to distribute housing gains from the winners to the losers through new forms of taxation [START_REF] Maxwell | Housing Wealth: First Timers to Old Timers[END_REF].

To date, most academic and policy attention has focused on the distributional impact of housing wealth inheritance (see for example [START_REF] Forrest | Differential Accumulation: Wealth, Inheritance and Housing Policy Reconsidered[END_REF]O'Dwyer, 2001). But the focus on inheritance, while understandable in the context of societal ageing, can overlook the myriad ways in which a platform of housing wealth, individually and across families, can be mobilized directly and indirectly at various points during lifetimes. This can involve the consumption funded through low cost, secured borrowing and through trading down or remortgaging. Funds released in this way may be used for private health care, private education (see for example [START_REF] Shapiro | The Hidden Cost of Being African-American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality[END_REF], to buy cars, second homes, as gifts to children or for a whole variety of goods and services. For example, a recent survey by the US NCRER (2004: 10) found that almost 24% of homebuyers invested only some or none of the net equity from the sale of the previous home in their current one -5% of households used it as downpayment for a second home. It has to be said, however, that it is often difficult to pin down empirically how funds released in these ways are actually used. Specific uses are often hidden in broad categories such as home improvement, financial investments or repayment of debts but as we saw earlier there is no doubt that consumer expenditure has been buttressed substantially in recent years through house price appreciation.

The mobilization of housing assets, however, also creates a whole new set of vulnerabilities. [START_REF] Bellamy | The Household Debt Bubble[END_REF] refers to the 'household debt bubble', much of it secured against housing assets, and to the expansion of debt collecting agencies as more households find themselves in difficulties and the dangers of a 'cascade into negative equity' if there is a sustained drop in house prices. Easier access to mortgage finance combined with the growth in home ownership and rising property values has produced spiralling levels of debt exposure for households. This is a global phenomenon although its extent varies from country to country according to local variations in lending practices, housing tenure structures, price trajectories and legalislative and fiscal frameworks. Between 1992 and 2002 mortgage debt as a percentage of GDP grew from 43% to 87% in the Netherlands, from 45% to 58% in the US and from 53% to 64% in the UK (Zhang, 2006: 2).

The most obvious policy response is to introduce measures to curb speculation and house price inflation. Policy responses by governments to the consequences of sustained house price inflation have, however, been generally rather limited. One reason for this is that it would require strong intervention in the housing market and thus a major change of ideological direction for many governments. Liberalization of financial markets has also produced new difficulties for governments seeking to dampen house price inflation. Financial deregulation has created many more opportunities for borrowers to reduce their mortgage costs through refinancing to counteract the impact of interest rate rises or other fiscal adjustments. [START_REF] Cruz | Global Property Guide[END_REF] suggests that this has been a significant factor in explaining the limited response to rate rises in the USA. Increasing housing supply is also likely to have little impact in the short run, even in societies where annual building rates are relatively high and environmental constraints are low. More specific measures can focus on policies to reduce affordability costs for younger entrants to the property market or for low paid, key workers. Generally, these are indirect interventions limited in scope and scale. Moreover, in contexts where a majority of the population are already owners, rising property values generate a pervasive feel-good factor combined with significant consumption effects that ripple through the entire economy. Put simply, whatever the macro economic effects and the impacts on minorities of sustained house price inflation, the majority feel they are doing pretty well.

But essentially, measures that in the past provided decommodified or partially decommodified forms of housing provision (i.e. social housing, subsidized build for sale schemes) are off the current policy agenda. Where national and local governments were previously in circumstances of monopoly or near monopoly provision of social housing they have given way to more private and quasi-private agencies and institutions. The dominant policy context has been one in which, with few exceptions, the prescription for housing reform or modernization has been a concoction of privatization, marketization and institutional fragmentation. National, regional and local governments have been at the forefront of these transformations in the core capitalist countries. In the transitional societies of the former Soviet Union or in poorer developing countries, however, it is global institutions that have been the most visible actors shaping housing reforms. These include organizations such as the Bank for International Settlements, the World Bank and the IMF and international regulatory bodies such as International Accounting Standards Committee and the International Valuation Standards Committee (for an extended discussion see [START_REF] Forrest | Globalisation, Governance and the Housing Market[END_REF]. Housing market governance is becoming more global because the risks to institutions and to households are growing should an economic downturn be occasioned by major conflict, natural catastrophe or some other destabilizing political or economic event or set of circumstances. But with such an occurrence, which some see as inevitable, it is national governments that are likely to be called upon to mediate between financial systems that owe little national allegiance and the local casualties, both households and institutions.

Conclusions

This article has been necessarily wide ranging, geographically and substantively, in order to highlight the different dimensions and significance of housing wealth for social policy. Housing asset wealth has become an important ingredient of opportunity and inequality and the drivers of these opportunities and inequalities are increasingly global to the extent that local housing market conditions are affected by the degree and nature of the embeddedness of cities and regions within the global economy. A pervasive and sustained house price boom has created a global topography of asset accumulation, housing privilege and risk exposure.

The article set out to establish that these processes have given housing a more prominent position in international policy debates. It then proceeded to set out the key factors that produce housing asset winners and losers. At the broadest level, it contrasted a growing mass of differentially endowed housing asset rich concentrated within more affluent societies and the concomitant growth of a mass of chronically housing poor associated particularly with sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and southern Asia.

The subsequent sections then discussed the key processes of differentiation among those with housing assets. These different dimensions provide a framework within which we can conceive of three interconnected continuums: a 'space' continuum ranging from 'escalator' to 'non-escalator' locations; an 'economy' continuum ranging from high to low accumulation conditions; and a 'policy environment' continuum (policy convoys) ranging from policy contexts that are particularly favourable for housing asset accumulation and their deployment -to policy contexts which are more restrictive. Cohorts pass through these interconnected continuums producing highly differentiated outcomes. The way in which policy regimes, demographics and economic cycles coalesce to privilege some sections of populations and disadvantage others varies across and within societies. For example, in East Asian societies, the pace and scale of urbanization, volatile house price inflation and the highly compressed period in which social and economic transformations have occurred have produced particularly sharp contrasts within and between generations. But whereas in Japan the housing asset rich are concentrated at the older end of the life course, in China it is generally an emergent, younger middle class that has been the main beneficiary of house price inflation.

Housing asset rich households have a valuable resource that has become more flexible and 'liquifiable' through neoliberal policies. However, while that flexibility offers positional advantage it also involves new risks with rising indebtedness. The fundamental risk is that a global boom becomes a global bust in which the most 'overgeared' and financially vulnerable households find themselves with unsustainable debt levels. There have been numerous predictions of imminent housing market collapse over the last decade. So far it has not happened but recent trends in the US housing market suggest that the longstanding housing boom may finally be faltering (US Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2006).

The article also suggested that the financialization of housing has involved a shift in governance structures with a greater influence of global organizations and financial institutions in risk management and monitoring -underlining the significance of housing assets for the global economy. However, it is also the case that growing housing related wealth and the greater opportunities to mobilize that wealth offer policy opportunities for national governments seeking new sources of revenue, fiscal savings and more progressive social outcomes. If we enter a post-neoliberal policy environment it is likely to involve a greater capture of housing wealth for redistributional purposes. Younger cohorts of asset rich homeowners may thus face a less benign policy environment compared with their older counterparts.

For the moment, however, the trends are regressive rather than progressive. Access to decent housing, good education, good health and a generally comfortable lifestyle is increasingly dependent on private means and the differential ability to accumulate, retain and mobilize housing wealth within households and across generations has become an important factor in determining access to those key resources. El presente documento examina la importancia del activo vivienda en la formación del paisaje global de oportunidades y carencias. Se trata de cuatro asuntos fundamentales. En primer lugar, trata de destacar la importancia creciente de la riqueza relacionada con las viviendas a escala global. En segundo lugar se interesa en el impacto desigual y potencialmente divisivo de la acumulación del activo vivienda, entre y dentro de las sociedades. En tercer lugar trata de mostrar la manera en que los contextos económicos y geodemográficas, y los contextos de política, se unen para producir varias consecuencias para las diferentes cohortes de la populación. Finalmente, analiza la manera en que el aumento de sistemas de viviendas dirigidos por el mercado, y la acumulación de riqueza por viviendas, están cambiando el medio de la política social. El subyacente razonamiento del documento es así: que la dinámica de los mercados de la vivienda y del activo vivienda son cada vez más importantes con relación a las pautas contemporáneas de riesgo, oportunidad, vulnerabilidad y privilegio. Por esta razón, deberían recibir más atención en la cuestión de la política social.

acknowledgements

  This article has been prepared as part of the initial background work for a project supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council-Housing Assets and Intergenerational Dynamics in East Asian Societies, RES 062-23-0187. resumen La Globalización y el Valor del Activo Vivienda: Geografías, Demografías y Transmisión de la Política Social

  biographical note RAY FORREST is Professor of Urban Studies in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol and Associate Director of the Centre for East Asian Studies at Bristol. He is currently joint editor of Housing Studies and co-editor of Asian Public Policy. He is a founding member of the Asia-Pacific Network of Housing Researchers and is an adjunct Professor at the City University of Hong Kong. Please address correspondence to Ray Forrest, School for Policy Studies and Centre for East Asian Studies, 8 Priory Road, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 4TB, UK. [email: R.Forrest@bristol.ac.uk]

Global Social Policy 8(2)

Forrest: Globalization and the Housing Asset Rich

Cet article explore l'importance d'actifs de logement en formant des opportunities et des disadvantage du paysage global. De cette manière, il est concerné avec quatre problèmes clés. Premièrement, il cherche à montrer la significance croissante de richesse de logement à une échelle globale. Deuxiemment, cet article est concerné par l'impact inégal et potentiellement fractionnel d'accumulation d'actifs de logement, dans et entre les sociétés. Troisiemment, cet article cherche à montrer comment le context économique, le context geo-démographique, et le context politique combinent de produire les résultats different pour les différents groupes de population. Quatrièmement, cet article discute la manière dans quel des régimes de logement et d'accumulation de richesse immobilière sont plus axés sur le marché et qui changent l'environnement social de polititique. L'argument fondamental de cet article est ce que le dynamique du marché de l'habitation et l'actifs de logement sont d'importance croissante en ce qui concerne le relation des configurations contemporaines de risque, d'occasion, de la vulnérabilité, et du privilège et ils doivent être embrassés plus au cours de la discussion sociale de politique.