Housing Shortage & Household Change
Estimating how housing shortage has reshaped household structures across Canada, 1981–2021.
Housing shortage doesn’t just raise prices — it changes how people live. When housing is scarce and expensive, people form households differently: young adults delay leaving home or stay in roommate arrangements longer, multigenerational living increases, and the number of family households with additional persons presnet increases.
This paper estimates the cumulative impact of housing shortage on family and household structures across Canada’s largest metro areas from 1981 to 2021. By modelling the causal impact of prevailing rent levels on aggregate household formation behaviour, it puts a demographic number on the cost of decades of undersupply.