The Landscape of Inequality in Residential Capitalism: Focusing on the Marginalized Impacts of Income Inequality on Housing Inequality

The scholarship of residential capitalism contends that capitalist inequality was reshaped centering around housing problems. However, the importance of housing inequality, particularly compared to conventional income inequality, should be identified to demonstrate the argument. If people cannot purchase houses and accumulate assets due to low income, housing inequality is only the result and extension of income inequality. Thus, this study contrasts income and housing inequalities using the concept of housing income, a measure of monetizing the relative benefits of homeownership to other tenures. The results suggest that the housing income of Chonsei households is not higher than that of rental households, and the 2nd to 4th income quintiles have lower housing income than the 1st income quintile. This implies that high income cannot guarantee a dominant position in the landscape of housing inequality in South Korea. Moreover, the result implies that the housing tenure hierarchy (homeownership-Chonsei-rent), which traditionally intermediated housing and income inequalities, does not work anymore. The differentiation of housing inequality from income inequality is especially prominent in the 2nd to 4th income quintiles of Chonsei households. These households utilized debts, called Chonsei deposit loans, to keep up with the rising Chonsei prices, but it aggravated interest burdens and reduced Chonsei households’ monetary benefits in housing income. In conclusion, although Chonsei households could sustain their housing tenure via debts, it closed the gap between Chonsei and rent.