A study covering 52 countries links less affordable housing with lower marriage rates, adding to evidence that accommodation costs can affect family formation. For childbirth, the relationship is less uniform: rising prices can make a first home harder to obtain while increasing the wealth of people who already own one.
The marriage study, by Jeremy Ko and colleagues, appeared in Human Settlements and Sustainability in 2026. It examined national data from 2009 to 2018, rather than following couples through their individual housing and relationship decisions.
Higher house-price-to-income ratios were associated with fewer marriages per 1,000 people. The relationship was stronger in the developed-country group and was not statistically significant in the developing-country group.
The authors suggest that difficulty establishing an independent household may contribute to the pattern. Their analysis cannot establish how many people postponed a wedding because of housing costs, or rule out every other explanation for changes in marriage rates.
What is housing affordability?
Housing affordability describes whether a household can pay for suitable accommodation while meeting its other needs. A purchase price is only part of the calculation.
For buyers, income, savings for a down payment, mortgage rates and repayment terms all matter. Renters face monthly payments, deposits and the cost of moving. Both groups also need to pay for utilities and other living expenses.
A price-to-income ratio compares property prices with earnings. It helps researchers track broad pressures, but it cannot show whether a particular household has enough savings, can obtain a loan or needs a larger home.
Our earlier coverage of Europe’s housing affordability and access to jobs examined a related problem: entering a local housing market can be difficult even when many existing residents already own their homes.
Higher prices can help owners and hinder non-owners
Economists Lisa J. Dettling and Melissa Schettini Kearney found opposing relationships in historical US research on house prices and births. Their principal analysis examined the housing upswing from 1997 to 2006.
The estimates reported in the revised NBER working paper associate a $10,000 increase in local house prices with a 5% increase in fertility rates among owners and a 2.4% decline among non-owners. Prices were measured in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars. These are relative changes in rates, not percentage-point changes or forecasts for households today.
An owner’s home equity, the property’s value minus the debt attached to it, can rise when prices increase. That may provide financial security or access to borrowing. Someone hoping to buy faces a higher entry price and potentially a larger required down payment.
Property wealth is also different from cash income. Accessing it may require selling or borrowing, and an owner who wants more space may find that the next home has become more expensive too.
A bigger housing bill can reflect preparation for children
A UK study published on July 22, 2026, complicates the assumption that higher monthly housing expenditure necessarily discourages childbirth.
Brian Buh of the University of Antwerp used household data from 1992 to 2021 to examine the likelihood of first, second and third births. The European Journal of Population paper found positive associations between housing expenditure and each birth order among owner-occupying households.
Among private and social renters, housing expenditure had no clear relationship with childbearing in the analysis.
Owners paying more may be investing in space or a location suited to the family they intend to have. Housing choices and family plans can develop together, making a larger mortgage payment an incomplete measure of financial strain.
The study establishes associations. It does not demonstrate that increasing a household’s mortgage payment would encourage it to have a child.
Housing policy is only one part of family policy
The OECD’s 2024 fertility review identifies housing costs alongside employment conditions, childcare and changing preferences about parenthood. Expensive rents and insecure work can leave young adults living with parents because independent accommodation is unaffordable.
Governments can address housing supply, rental assistance and access to suitable accommodation. Helping households borrow more also requires attention to supply: additional purchasing power may put pressure on prices when available homes remain scarce.
Research on births in a particular period also cannot automatically establish how many children people will eventually have. Some households postpone parenthood and later catch up; others may not.
Cheaper housing alone cannot resolve every reason for delaying or avoiding parenthood. The OECD recommends policies that allow people to have the children they want, while also preparing economies for persistently lower fertility. Any increase in births would take roughly two decades to add to the working-age population.
