Originally published in 1995, this innovative collection provides a multidisciplinary and cross-national perspective on the links between housing, personal wealth and the family in contemporary society. Reasserting the role of the family and informal networks in housing provision, it counteracts a tendency to view housing issues in the narrow terms of market and state provision.

The contributions include analyses from the USA, Japan, Hong Kong, Greece, France, Sweden and Hungary, and this highly international perspective allows the book to address important policy questions and offer new theoretical insights into the way housing is embedded in the wider social structure. By moving away from the more usual, highly ethnocentric discussion of today’s housing issues, the book aims to provide a more sociological account of the relationship between housing and wealth, and the social structures within which that relationship is founded. Today it can be read in its historical context.