This paper discusses the first major piece of work based on the new OECD Affordable Housing Database (AHD). That work uses statistical techniques to develop a typology of OECD countries based mainly on housing market and policy variables which both helps to describe how attributes vary across countries and can form a basis for further comparative analyses. The paper starts by commenting on the strengths of the data, methodology and outputs arising from their analysis and goes on to discuss the attributes of the resultant typology and what they mean for how the typology might be used. The paper then goes on to discuss two pieces of research that generated topic specific typologies, the first where the AHD provided a valuable starting point for a more detailed qualitative comparative analysis of a particular housing policy- safety nets for mortgagors, and another where broader based OECD data helped to define the problem of whether increased regulation was limiting access to homeownership among younger households.

To cite this article

Whitehead, C. M. E. (2018). A Comment – On building typologies of housing systems in the OECD. Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, 500-501-502, 37–43.
https://doi.org/10.24187/ecostat.2018.500t.1944