주택은 사유재지만 공공재적 성격이 내재되어 있는 재화다. 따라서 주택이 가지는 함의는 국가적 수준과 개인 및 가구적 수준 모두에서 그 중요성이 존재한다. 본 연구는 주택이 가지는 사회적 함의를 시장 왜곡을 초래할 수 있는 투기적 수요, 소유와 점유의 불일치를 촉발하는 사회적 요인, 그리고 출신지역별 주거격차라는 세 가지 프리즘을 통해 분석하고 있다.
주택 및 관련 산업이 국가경제의 부침에 미치는 영향은 지대하다. 거시적 측면에서 국가 성장의 완급 조절을 위한 주택 및 관련 산업에 대한 정책 개입은 전 세계 모든 국가에서 채택하고 있다. 개인 및 가구적 측면에서 주택은 안정적 삶을 영위하기 위한 소비적 수요와 인플레에 따른 자산 보전적 수단으로서의 투자적 수요로 구분된다. 따라서 개인 및 가구의 주거안정을 위한 적정 수준의 주택 공급은 미시적 수준에서의 소비적 수요의 안정은 물론 거시적 측면에서의 경제성장을 위해 매우 긴요하다고 하겠다. 주택시장의 불안정은 주택이 가지는 공공재적 재화의 특성으로 야기되는 시장 실패와 주로 정부 정책의 잘못된 개입에 따른 정부 실패로 구분된다. 어느 경우에서든 국가경제의 불안정과 개인 및 가구의 주거불안정을 초래할 수 있다는 측면에서 이러한 오류를 시정하기 위한 적절한 정책적 수단의 마련은 매우 긴요하다고 할 수 있다.
본 연구의 목적은 서울의 주택시장을 중심으로 우리나라 주택 시장에서 노정되는 시장실패와 정부실패의 사례 및 문제 해결을 위한 정책대안 구축에 있다. 본 연구에서는 투기적 수요의 발현과 그 영향, 소유 점유 불일치의 요인, 주거수준 격차라는 세 가지 현상에 대한 분석을 통해 개별 지표가 노정하는 사회적 문제점의 요인 및 그 대안을 분석하고 있다.
첫 번째 실증 분석에서는 정상적 시장에서 노정되는 개별 주택의 투자가치와 주택시장에서 표현되는 시장가치를 추정하여 시기별 주택정책이 미치는 영향을 분석하였다. 이 연구에서는 2006년부터 2016년까지 약 10년간 수도권 주택시장에서의 투자가치와 시장가치의 변화를 통하여 시기별 주택정책이 주택시장에 미치는 영향을 분석하였다. 사용된 자료는 통계청에서 격년 단위로 제공하는 주거실태조사 자료이며, 계량모형으로는 하위 주택시장의 공간적 이질성을 추정할 수 있는 다층모형을 적용하였다. 개별 주택의 투자가치와 하위 시장의 시장가치, 그리고 항상소득과 거래소득의 추정을 위해 네 개의 매개 변수를 추정하였다.
침체된 경제를 활성화하기 위해 시행된 양적완화 등과 같은 주택시장의 활성화 정책은 시장의 왜곡을 초래하는 것으로 드러났으며, 특히 이러한 왜곡은 주거 양극화를 더욱 심화시키는 것으로 분석되었다. 정상 시장에서 자가소유와 정(+)의 관계를 보이던 개별 주택의 투자가치는, 2014년 이후 시작된 대규모 주택투자 촉진책 이후 부(-)의 관련성을 보이는 것으로 드러났다. 이것은 개별 주택의 자가로서의 투자가치가 높음에도 불구하고 시장 전체의 자가소유 비율은 낮아지는 현상을 의미한다. 시장에서의 자체 조절 기능을 왜곡시킬 수 있는 수요 중심의 정책개입은 기 주택 소유 계층의 투기적 수요를 유발하고, 주택시장의 투기시장화는 가수요와 유발수요를 촉진하여 주택 가격을 폭등시키는 결과를 야기한다. 이러한 시장 왜곡은 정상적 상황이라면 자가 시장 진입이 가능했던 저소득층은 물론 중산층의 자가 주택시장 진입을 어렵게 하는 것으로 드러났다. 양적완화라는 정책개입과 이로 인한 주택시장의 왜곡이 계층 간 주거 격차를 더욱 확대시키는 정부실패의 전형적 사례라 할 수 있다.
두 번째 실증분석에서는 주택의 소유-점유 불일치 현상을 분석하였다. 차가에 비해 자가소유 및 거주가 가지는 사회적 함의는 가구의 높은 주거 안정성, 자녀의 높은 학업 성취도, 적극적 지역사회 참여, 낮은 범죄율 등과 같은 긍정적 사회현상과 밀접한 관련성을 가진다. 이러한 장점에도 불구하고 전세라는 특이한 임차시장을 형성하고 있는 우리나라의 경우 다른 선진국들에 비해 자가소유 가구가 자가에 거주하지 않고 차가에 거주하는 비율이 높게 형성되고 있다. 이것은 주로 직주 불일치, 더 나은 주거환경 지향, 통근/통학의 용이성, 취학연령 자녀의 교육 여건 등과 같은 현상으로 설명된다. 하지만 이러한 소유-점유 불일치는 하위 주택 시장에서의 주택가격 및 전·월세 가격의 폭등 등과 같은 시장실패로 귀결된다는 측면에서 바람직하지 않은 사회적 현상이라 하겠다.
본 연구의 목적은 과도한 사교육 열풍이라는 우리나라의 독특한 사회 현상이 기형적 주택시장의 형성에 미치는 영향을 분석하는 데 있다. 사례지역으로는 서울의 25개 자치단체를 설정하였으며, 자료는 1995년부터 2015년까지 3개 인구 및 주택 센서스를 사용하였다. 사용된 계량기법은 소유와 점유의 불일치에 따른 표본의 선택성을 보정하기 위한 이변량 프로빗 자기선택 모형이다.
자가소유 가구가 차가에 거주할 확률은 취학연령 자녀가 존재하는 가구가 기타 가구에 비해 압도적으로 높은 것으로 드러났다. 거주 지역의 사교육 여건은 지역의 거주환경, 학군, 교통 및 자치단체의 재정자립도 등과 같은 전통적 요인에 비해 훨씬 높은 수준의 결정요인인 것으로 분석되었다. 강남구를 비롯한 강남 지역 3개 자치단체와 용산구, 양천구 등과 같은 사교육 활성화 지역에서의 자가소유 가구의 차가점유 확률은 기타 자치단체에 비해 매우 높은 것으로 드러났다. 특히 취학연령대 학생이 존재하는 가구의 이들 자치구와의 관련성은 모형에서 통제된 기타 지역적 특성과는 달리 유일하게 통계적으로 유의미한 정(+)의 관련성을 보이는 것으로 분석되었다. 과도하게 높은 사교육 열풍이라는 사회적 현상이 소유-점유 불일치라는 시장실패로 귀결되는 전형적인 사례라 하겠다.
마지막 사례는 편향된 지역개발 정책에 따른 정부실패와 특정 지역 출신에 대한 편견이 야기하는 시장실패의 사례에 대한 실증 분석이다. 1960년대 개발독재 시대 이후 우리나라의 지역개발은 성장거점으로 지정된 수도권과 남동임해권, 그리고 개발 축에 걸쳐 있던 충청권을 중심으로 전개되어 왔다. 이에 따라 거점과 개발 축에서 소외되어 왔던 호남권과 강원권의 상대적 낙후성에 대한 인식은 다양한 간접 자료와 학술적 연구를 통해 증명된 바 있다. 다른 한편으로, 단일 민족임을 자부하는 우리나라임에도 불구하고 출신지역, 특히 호남출신에 대한 차별은 특히 영남출신이 정권을 장악했던 개발독재 시대에 극심했던 것으로 나타났으며 이러한 사실은 다수의 학술적 연구와 언론 보도를 통해 드러난 바 있다.
본 연구의 목적은 개발독재 시대 시행되어 왔던 편향된 지역개발 정책과 사회적 편견이 출신지역별 주거수준에 미치는 영향을 분석하는 데 있다. 본 연구에서는 가용한 미시자료의 활용을 극대화하면서 개발독재 시대의 효과를 반영할 수 있는 1980년부터 2000년까지의 3개 시점에 대한 인구 및 주택센서스 자료를 이용하였다.
본 연구에서는 자가가구가 차가가구에 비해 가지는 사회-경제적 수월성을 감안하여 출신 지역별 주거수준 차이를 규명하였다. 아울러 상당 수준의 출신지역별 표본 수집이 가능하고, 중립적 시각에서 사회경제적 수준에 대한 비교 분석이 가능한 서울을 사례지역으로 설정하였다. 본 연구에서는 분석에 적합한 계량모형의 구축에 각별히 유의하였으며 채택된 방법은 확장된 해체기법이다. 이 모형은 본 연구와 같이 최우도기법을 적용할 때 집단 간 비교 분석 시 야기될 수 있는 통계적 오류를 제어할 수 있는 계량기법이다.
1980년 이래 2000년까지 개발 축이라 할 수 있는 수도권과 충청권, 그리고 남동임해권 출신 가구의 자가소유 비율을 개발 축에서 소외되어 왔던 호남권과 강원권 출신 가구에 비해 높은 것으로 드러났다. 기간별로 두 개 집단 간 자가소유 비율의 차이는 약 5%에서 10% 수준을 유지하였으며 이러한 차이는 통계적으로 유의미한 것으로 분석되었다. 부의 축적에 상대적으로 유리한 개발 축에 거주하는 지역 주민들의 주거수준이 개발 축에서 소외된 지역 주민들의 주거수준에 비해 높을 것이라는 본 연구의 가설이 부합되는 결과라 하겠다. 호남출신에 대한 사회적 차별은 강원권과 차이를 보이는 것으로 드러났다. 영남출신과 호남출신의 자가비율 차이의 상당 부분(60%) 모형에서 통제되지 않은 편견 또는 차별이 내재되어 있을 가능성이 높은 잔차효과로 설명되는 반면, 영남출신과 강원출신 차이의 잔차효과에 의한 설명은 30% 수준인 것으로 나타났으며 이들 두 지역 자가소유 비율의 차이는 대부분 가구의 특성효과 차이에 의해 설명되는 것으로 분석되었다. 이러한 결과는 개발독재 시대 영남출신 권력의 독점과 호남출신에 대한 기타 지역, 특히 영남지역의 편견이 누적적으로 결합되어 나타난 사회적 실패의 사례라 하겠다.
주택이라는 재화가 함의하는 사유재 및 공공재적 속성은 시장은 물론 정책이 미치는 파편성으로 인해 미시적 수준의 개인 및 가구의 주거복지 수준에 차별적인 결과를 미친다. 본 연구에서는 우리나라, 특히 서울시의 주택시장에서 노정되고 있는 세 가지 사회적 현상에 대한 정부실패와 시장실패의 사례를 분석하였다. 본 연구에서는 개별 사례가 가지는 주택시장에서의 정부실패와 시장실패를 보완할 수 있는 정책적 대안을 제시하였다. 제시된 개별 사례별 대안(들)은 본 연구에서 분석된 사례 자체에 한정되지 않는다. 현재 진행되고 있는 다양한 지역개발 정책과 사교육열과 같은 사회적 현상을 극복할 수 있는 대안으로 자리 잡기를 기대한다.

Housing progress of the population is closely related to the nation’s economy, and expanding housing consumption is a major stimulant to the nation’s economic growth. Homeownership is an important social good because it increases responsibility and stakes out a man’s own place in his community. It is a symbol of commitment, solidarity and allegiance to a society. Although some researchers have argued that the belief that universal ownership is good for societies is “cruel and deceptive” and a “myth”, common sense seems to indicate that any type of homeownership is much better to societies than renting since substantial advantages accrue to individual households as well as to the public. Because of these reasons, the degree of homeownership attainment is one of the most important indicators in a nation’s welfare, which determines and contributes to the stability of the nation.
The common advantage of homeownership in household and neighborhood level is that homeownership confers on families a measure of independence, security, dignity, and a sign of social status, which is of crucial importance to the families’ elevation of the social, political, and economic status. Some recent studies demonstrate that homeowners are more likely to care for their property, collaborate with neighbors, participate in community building, and promote the security and vitality of neighborhoods. Naturally many researchers have focused on detecting the determinants of homeownership from the various perspectives—economics, geography, demography, planning and public policy, etc.
The main objective of this study is to enhance the scope of homeownership models by incorporating three types of socio-economic indicators (speculative demand, housing sub-tenure and housing disparities) from the perspectives of diverse homeownership models. These models are based on a theoretical concept of housing demography that explicitly studies household behavior with respect to socio-economic characteristics of housing markets. This study investigates improved models of housing consumption by advancing the frontier of method and knowledge with respect to three fields: economics, geography, and demography. I believe this approach that investigates housing sub-market with respect to socio-economic characteristics is the foundation upon which a theory of urban housing markets should be constructed. This study is composed of the three empirical essays on homeonwership and the explanations of the major contents in each essay is as follows.
Chapter 2 develops our knowledge of the factors affecting tenure choice by examining detailed individual housing and market characteristics utilizing the 2006 to 2016 Housing Survey Data. Estimating the differences in the quality of renting versus owning and rent/price ratios, which are calculated directly from observed survey data may cause biased market effects. To mitigate this bias, the present study adopts an instrumental variable technique developed by Goodman (1988). This study presents a model of permanent income and hedonic housing price followed by a tenure choice model for the apartment market in Seoul. Fitted values of income, housing specific value/rent ratio and market specific price ratios are incorporated in the final tenure choice models. The study finds that parameters representing these values are highly significant and of the correct sign for the apartment market in the normal periods in 2006 to 2012. However, the reverse is true for the market in 2014 to 2016 when government interfered with the market to lessen borrowing constraints to boost the stagnant economy.
Park GeunHye government lessened borrowing constraints to stimulate the economy in 2014. Former strategy and finance minister Choi Kyung-hwan eased loan-to-value (LTV) and debt-to-income (DTI) ratios for those seeking mortgages, and obviously demanded the central bank to lower down the key rate. The administration explicitly took diverse policies to boost the real estate, which was unprecedented. A boom in South Korea’s property market, fueled by record-low interest rates and relaxation of mortgage lending restrictions in 2014, has sustained South Korea’s economic growth in recent years. But there had been increasing concern about the risks posed by soaring household debt and the sustainability of growth relying on construction investment.
The housing market showed signs of overheating particularly in wealthy districts such as Gangnam and Seocho in Seoul. The government noted that those who already own houses are increasingly purchasing second and third properties. Among those who bought houses between 2013 and 2017, 43.7 percent owned one or more already. Home buyers in Seoul were twice more likely to have owned multiple homes, accounting for 13.9 percent of home buyers in general in 2016 from 6 percent the previous year. The previous administrations' easing of taxes and deregulation helped real estate speculators, leading to soaring prices despite a stable supply of new houses.
Real estate buyers jump into ‘gap investment.’ People buying apartments at ridiculously low prices. These speculators are buying apartments currently under jeonse contracts by directly contacting landlords and taking ownership of homes while tenants are still living in them. This is how so-called gap investment works. This type of investment started becoming popular in 2015-2016 when the housing market was hot. Profiting from this scheme requires housing prices to go up continuously. Since home prices was soaring in 2015-2016, more people are interested in buying apartments through gap investment. This chapter concludes that if the role of government policy on housing welfare is to syphon off the cream of the rental population, developing a housing policy deviated from the economic policy would give a lot of opportunity to a large segment of the population.
The purpose of Chapter 3 is to investigate the effects of private education fever on tenure and occupancy choices in Seoul, Korea. We utilized the 2% micro data from the Korea Census of Population and Housing Data in 2005, 2010, and 2015. Considering the particular nature of the private education fever in Korea, this study extended the traditional tenure choice model by investigating demands for tenure choice and subsequent occupancy choice as a joint decision. I applied the bivariate probit model to control sample selection bias that could be incurred by sample selectivity from a chain of tenure choice and occupancy choice.
Results from the bivariate probit model confirm the a priori belief that demand for tenure and occupancy decisions are interrelated. Thus, they should be considered as joint decision processes with a different set of explanatory variables affecting each model differently. In particular, this study attempted to identify determinants that affect occupancy choice for the home-owning households in Seoul.
I summarize the major findings as follows. First, I found the likelihood of renting for home-owning households with school-age children proved to be higher than that of other types of households. Second, prevalence of cram school showed a negative effect on homeownership probability but a positive effect on the renting decision for homeowners. Third, the probability of the home-owning households with school-age children living in rental housing is the only household type with statistical significance at p <. 05 or higher, regarding the relationship to the prevalence of the cram school for all census years. Fourth, prevalence of cram school is the only area characteristic significantly related to the geographical distribution of renting probability for homeowners with a significance level consistently at p < .05 or higher for the three census years.
In summary, these major findings imply that households with school-age children are observed to exercise housing occupancy choice through location choice in Seoul, Korea. The opportunity for a private education is more important to households with school-age children than households without school-age children, and households with school-age children are more likely to select housing occupancy and residential locations offering better chances of private education. We found the home-owning households with school-age children place significantly more weight on the prevalence of private institutes than households without school-age children in their rental location choice.
This chapter enhanced the literature on the housing sub-tenure choice theories by incorporating the phenomena of private education fever in Korea. Few studies have attempted to identify the impact of private education fever on housing tenure and occupancy choices. According to our review of the literature, this study is the first empirical attempt to directly identify the inter-relationship between the effect of private education fever and housing tenure and occupancy choices. A paucity of information about the major economic variables in our data, such as income, accumulated wealth, and housing price, made identifying the direct analysis regarding the relationship between the economic variables and housing sub-tenure choice impossible, which provides a topic for future studies to explore.
The discrepancy between homeownership and owner-occupied ratios in Seoul is high enough and is not negligible in academics and policy implications in housing. First, the likelihood of becoming home-owning renters is closely related to diverse households and area characteristics. However, household type combined with marital status of parents and the presence of school-age children is the most important factor that affects the probability to rent for homeowners. The finding that the presence of children in households does not guarantee the positive effect of increasing the probability for home-owning households to rent implies future sub-tenure studies could decompose housing type in a manner as detailed as possible and, thus, similar to this study.
Second, most sub-tenure studies in Korea attribute the discrepancy between property ownership and living arrangement to uncontrolled non-monetary area characteristics such as property price, educational resources, better access to workplace and commuting, and advantage of reserved investment potential for their own housing elsewhere. This study identified that availability of private education in an area that has never been utilized in the literature is the sole and most important determinant for becoming home-owning renters, controlling for the four area characteristics in Seoul. Future studies could incorporate additional area characteristics in the sub-tenure choice model directly to reach their conclusions instead of inferring their conclusions from the unobserved characteristics in the model.
In addition, the finding of this study presents the following policy implication. Statistics Korea reports that more than 20% of homeowners don't live in their own homes in 2015. The proportion of renting households who own a housing unit in a region other than their current address is much higher than that of other developed countries. This phenomenon implies that the conventional tenure classification with an assumption of one housing for one household can understate the extent to which households own residential dwellings in Korea. Since the government policy to reach the 65% homeownership target at the national level is based on a naïve assumption, computation of national-level homeownership could be tantamount to leading policy makers astray and bewilder residents in Korea. Thus, when designing a policy targeting tenants, renters should no longer be treated as a uniformly under-performing class requiring government support.
In tandem with the contribution to housing tenure choice theory and the policy implications, the findings of this study also highlight the necessity for comprehensive education reform in Korea. An abundance of educational policy reforms has been implemented for decades to reduce the private education expenditure, but the impacts of the reforms disappeared without a trace and resulted in parents falling into an education trap. Despite the failures, we suggest that central government in Korea should redesign the public education system to dampen the private education fever in the long-term perspective. Notably, it would be impossible to resolve the education trap without comprehensive and fundamental policy reform that encompasses all segments of society as well as an epistemological change in the attitudes of Korean parents.
The main research question of Chapter 4 is: In what degree does place of birth matter for households' residential well-being in Seoul, Korea? Since 1960, Korea has been near the top of the world’s growth charts, with forty years of growth averaging more than 8% a year, doubling repeatedly in an exponential explosion of economic growth. With the successful economic growth, while the living standard of the country’s population has increased substantively, the effect of the benefits has been concentrated on a few regions.
Since the development model focusing on efficiency was supported widely, the so-called growth pole strategy was upheld, while precedence was given to a few predetermined industrial projects concentrated within selective locations. Before the 1990s, most of the industrial and urban activities had been concentrated around the Seoul and Busan metropolitan areas and the remaining parts (particularly Jeolla and Gangwon provinces) of the country lag behind in their economic development. Although diverse government interventions to lessen the disparity have been implemented during the last two decades, the consequence was a typical example of ‘the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer.’
One of the curious questions to be resolved in the study of regional disparity in Korea is that North and South Jeolla provinces represent a disproportionately large share of urban poverty. In Seoul, people from North and South Jeolla provinces comprise 28.3% of the total urban poor in 1989. Although a bunch of studies has been conducted regarding regional disparities in Korea, no empirical studies are available that permit this hypothesis to be tested.
The data used in this study are drawn from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 Korea Census Data (2% sample). The data provide individual household-level observations and variables generally used to analyze homeownership attainment: such as gender, age, one’s academic career, job status, the number of household, the type of house, one’s birthplace, and so forth. We cannot analyze, however, the effect of households’ income and housing price variables on homeownership because the census data do not provide these variables.
The present study finds that having controlled for the factors traditionally thought to influence households' choice of housing tenure, as well as other housing market characteristics in Seoul, one’s place of birth has played a primary role in determining whether or not households becomes a homeowner.
The outcomes of this paper based on Korea Census Data 1980-2000 show that the ownership ratios of Seoulites from Jeolla and GangWon are rather lower than those of GyeongSang-origins, which have persisted over past the two decades. Such outcomes support a proper rationale that people whose birthplaces are estranged from economic development courses and still remain undeveloped, like Jeolla and GangWon, may suffer from lower housing welfare.
In addition, we find residual effects are significant in explaining the persistent ownership disparities by one’s place of birth. While most of the differences between households from GyeongSang and GangWon are due to the differences in group endowments, the deficits in Jeolla-origins’ homeownership rates are explained by residual effects. This result suggests that the aversion to people from Jeolla probably affects adversely on attaining their dwellings. It is a well-known fact that the problem of the regional disparity and prejudice in Korea touches off not merely a state of tension among groups but also a negative result ranging over all fields of society, economy, and culture.
Despite this empirical analysis, it is not certain whether the considerable discrepancies of homeownership are caused by uneven regional development policies and regional discrimination or by personal socio-economic endowment differentials. Furthermore, since the Korea Census Data lack such important variables as income or the residence duration of Seoulites from other provinces, we have no choice but to admit the incompleteness of our analysis. I promise to offer further studies as soon as possible only if the data provide information related to variables omitted in our model.
Korea has the national goal that every family in Korea is able to afford a decent home in a suitable environment, and increasing the rate of homeownership has been a long-standing goal of housing policies in Korea. Increasing the ratio to reach the 65% of homeownership target in the national level has been a recent goal of housing policy in Korea. However, homeownership is advanced by interactions between structure and economic circumstances that produce a change in individual status and in the broader regional context, mainly caused by diverse policies.
Owning home is not just limited to the families’ non-monetary welfare. Financially, ownership is not only a symbol of wealth, but the most important actual wealth which most families manage to accumulate. Thus, housing is an investment as well as a place to live. Simply put, buying a house is a good hedge for an individual household against inflation of housing costs because in general, housing prices have kept pace with or exceeded the pace of inflation. The housing sector not only fulfills basic needs for shelter, but also plays a vital role in the health of both national and regional economies. Given the significance of housing to a society in general and to an individual household in particular, future homeownership studies should consider diverse perspectives to investigate the complex crystal with many facets of housing.