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IZA Discussion Paper No. 18073
August 2025
Can’t Buy Me Home: Beliefs, Facts, and Policy in the Housing Affordability Crisis
Alda Botelho Azevedo, Inês Gonçalves, João Pereira dos Santos

Our study investigates public opinion on the housing affordability crisis in Portugal through a nationally representative survey combined with an information provision experiment. Participants were asked to identify perceived causes of rising housing prices, assess their factual knowledge of the housing market and sociodemographic trends, and indicate their preferred policy solutions, carefully framed to reflect trade-offs. Half of the respondents were randomly assigned to receive official statistical information on these trends before indicating their policy preferences. The findings reveal significant heterogeneity in beliefs about the causes of the crisis, pervasive misperceptions regarding market trends, and a limited impact of information provision on policy preferences. These results underscore the challenges of addressing housing policy through informational interventions alone and highlight the need for strategies that integrate behavioral and contextual factors to foster informed public engagement.

Kommunikation
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Netzwerkkoordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

Das IZA@LISER-Netzwerk ist eine weltweite Gemeinschaft für exzellente Forschung in der Arbeitsmarktökonomie und angrenzenden Fachgebieten. Nach dem Wechsel von Bonn wird das Netzwerk nun am Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) koordiniert.

Über das IZA@LISER Network
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