Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems

住房是发达国家许多问题的根源

Since the second world war, governments across the rich world have made three big mistakes, says Callum Williams

卡勒姆•威廉姆斯(Callum Williams)表示，自二战以来，富裕国家的政府犯下了三大错误

Jan 16th 2020 | 

THE FINANCIAL crisis of 2008-10 illustrated the immense dangers of a mismanaged housing market. In America during the early to mid-2000s irresponsible, sometimes illegal, mortgage lending led many households to accumulate more debt than they could sustain. Between 2000 and 2007 America’s household debt rose from 104% of household income to 144%. House prices rose by 50% in real terms. The ensuing wave of defaults led to a global recession and nearly brought down the financial system.

2008-10年的金融危机说明了管理不善的房地产市场的巨大危险。在本世纪头十年的早期到中期，美国不负责任的，有时是非法的抵押贷款导致许多家庭积累了超过他们所能承受的债务。2000年至2007年间，美国家庭债务占家庭收入的比例从104%升至144%。实际房价上涨了50%。随后的违约潮导致了全球经济衰退，几乎拖垮了金融体系。

词汇

Immense/  巨大的

From the 1960s to the 2000s a quarter of recessions in the rich world were associated with steep declines in house prices. Recessions associated with credit crunches and house-price busts were deeper and lasted longer than other recessions did. Yet the damage caused by poorly managed housing markets goes much deeper than financial crises and recessions, as harmful as they are. In rich countries, and especially in the English-speaking world, housing is too expensive, damaging the economy and poisoning politics. And it is becoming ever more so: from their post-crisis low, global real house prices have since risen by 15%, taking them well past their pre-crisis peak.

从20世纪60年代到21世纪头十年，发达国家四分之一的经济衰退都与房价的急剧下跌有关。与信贷紧缩和房价下跌相关的衰退比其他衰退更严重，持续的时间更长。然而，管理不善的房地产市场造成的损害比金融危机和衰退要严重得多，尽管它们危害很大。在富裕国家，尤其是英语语言的国家，住房太贵了，破坏了经济，毒害了政治。现在更是如此:从危机后的低点，全球实际房价已经上涨了15%，远远超过了危机前的峰值。

Traditionally politicians like it when house prices rise. People feel richer and therefore borrow and spend more, giving the economy a nice boost, they think. When everyone is feeling good about their financial situation, incumbent politicians have a higher chance of re-election.

传统上，政客们喜欢看到房价上涨。他们认为，人们感觉更富有了，因此会增加借贷和支出，从而给经济带来良好的提振。当每个人都对自己的财政状况感觉良好时，现任政客连任的机会就更大。

But there is another side. Costly housing is unambiguously bad for the rich world’s growing population of renters, forcing them to trim spending on other goods and services. And an economic policy which relies on homebuyers taking on large debts is not sustainable. In the short term, finds a study by the IMF, rising household debt boosts economic growth and employment. But households then need to rein in spending to repay their loans, so in three to five years, those effects are reversed: growth becomes slower than it would have been otherwise, and the odds of a financial crisis increase.

但也有另一面。毫无疑问，昂贵的住房对富裕国家日益增长的租房者来说是不利的，这迫使他们削减在其他商品和服务上的支出。依赖购房者承担巨额债务的经济政策是不可持续的。国际货币基金组织的一项研究发现，在短期内，不断增加的家庭债务会促进经济增长和就业。但家庭随后需要控制支出以偿还贷款，因此在三到五年内，这些影响将被逆转:经济增长将比不这样做时更慢，金融危机发生的几率将增加。

Malfunctioning housing markets also hit the supply side of the economy. The rich world’s most productive cities do not build enough new houses, constraining their growth and making them more expensive than they would otherwise be. People who would like to move to London, San Francisco or Sydney cannot afford to do so. Since productivity and wages are much higher in cities than outside, that reduces overall GDP.

失灵的房地产市场也打击了经济的供应面。发达国家最具生产力的城市没有建造足够多的新住房，这限制了它们的发展，使居住成本比原本要昂贵得多。想搬到伦敦、旧金山或悉尼的人负担不起。由于城市的生产率和工资远高于城市以外，这就降低了整体GDP。

So it is bad news that, in recent decades, the rich world has got worse at building new homes. A recent paper by Kyle Herkenhoff, Lee Ohanian and Edward Prescott argues that in America this process has “slowed interstate migration, reduced factor reallocation, and depressed output and productivity relative to historical trends”. Constraints on urban growth also make it harder to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, since big cities are the most efficient built forms. In America there are more building restrictions in places which have lower emissions per household.

因此，近几十年来，发达国家在建造新房方面的表现越来越差，这是个坏消息。Kyle Herkenhoff、Lee Ohanian和Edward Prescott最近发表的一篇论文认为，在美国，这一过程“放缓了州际移民，减少了要素再分配，并相对于历史趋势压低了产出和生产率”。对城市发展的限制也使得减少二氧化碳排放变得更加困难，因为大城市是最高效的建筑形式。在美国，在人均排放量较低的地方有更多的建筑限制。

Housing is also a big reason why many people across the rich world feel that the economy does not work for them. Whereas baby-boomers tend to own big, expensive houses, youngsters must increasingly rent somewhere cramped with their friends, fomenting millennials’ resentment of their elders. Thomas Piketty, an economist, has claimed that in recent decades the return to capital has exceeded what is paid to labour in the form of wages, raising inequality. But others have critiqued Mr Piketty’s findings, pointing out that what truly explains the rise in the capital share is growing returns on housing.

房地产也是许多富裕国家的人觉得经济不适合他们的一个重要原因。婴儿潮时期出生的人往往拥有又大又贵的房子，而年轻人却越来越多地与朋友合租，这激起了千禧一代对长辈的怨恨。经济学家托马斯•皮凯蒂(Thomas Piketty)声称，最近几十年，资本回报率超过了以工资形式支付给劳动力的回报率，加剧了不平等。但其他人对皮凯蒂的发现提出了批评，他们指出，资本份额上升的真正原因是住房回报率的增长。

词汇

Foment/  煽动；挑起

Other research, meanwhile, has found that housing is behind some of the biggest political shocks of recent years. Housing markets and populism are closely linked. Britons living in areas where house prices are stagnant were more likely to vote for Brexit in 2016, and French people for the far-right National Front in the presidential elections of 2017, according to research from Ben Ansell of Oxford University and David Adler of the European University Institute.

与此同时，其他研究发现，住房是近年来一些最大的政治冲击背后的原因。住房市场与民粹主义紧密相连。根据牛津大学(Oxford University)的本•安塞尔(Ben Ansell)和欧洲大学研究所(European University Institute)的戴维•阿德勒(David Adler)的研究，居住在房价停滞地区的英国人更有可能在2016年投票支持英国退欧，而在2017年的总统选举中，法国人更有可能支持极右翼的国民阵线(National Front)。

 

This special report will argue that since the second world war, governments across the rich world have made three big mistakes. They have made it too difficult to build the accommodation that their populations require; they have created unwise economic incentives for households to funnel more money into the housing market; and they have failed to design a regulatory infrastructure to constrain housing bubbles.

本特别报道认为，自二战以来，发达国家的政府犯了三大错误。他们已经很难建造他们的人口需要的住所;它们为家庭向房地产市场注入更多资金创造了不明智的经济激励;他们也未能设计出一个监管基础设施来抑制房地产泡沫。

 

Happily, they are at last starting to recognise the damage caused by these policies. In Britain the government now openly says that the housing market is “broken”. Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, has pledged to make housing more affordable. Canada’s recent election was fought partly on who would do more to rein in the country’s spiralling housing costs.

令人高兴的是，他们终于开始认识到这些政策造成的损害。在英国，政府现在公开表示房地产市场已经“崩溃”。澳大利亚总理斯科特•莫里森(Scott Morrison)已承诺让人们更能负担得起住房。加拿大最近的选举在一定程度上取决于谁会采取更多措施来控制该国不断上升的住房成本。

词汇

Spiralling/螺旋形运动；使……成螺旋形；急剧增长

They need to learn from places where the housing market broadly works—and those places do exist. As this report shows, flexible planning systems, appropriate taxation and financial regulation can turn housing into a force for social and economic stability. Singapore’s public-housing system helps improve social inclusion; mortgage finance in Germany helped the country avoid the worst of the 2008-10 crisis; Switzerland’s planning system goes a long way to explaining why populism has so far not taken off there. Governments across the world need to act decisively, and without delay. Nothing less than the world’s economic and political stability is at stake.

他们需要向那些住房市场普遍有效的地方学习——这些地方确实存在。正如这份报告所显示的，灵活的规划系统、适当的税收和金融监管可以将住房转变为社会和经济稳定的力量。新加坡的公共住房系统有助于提高社会包容性;德国的抵押贷款融资帮助该国避免了2008-10年危机的最糟糕阶段;瑞士的计划体制在解释民粹主义至今未在该国盛行方面走了很长的路。世界各国政府需要果断行动，刻不容缓。世界经济和政治稳定正处于危险之中。