Housing affordability and residential mobility as drivers of locational inequality

• Unaffordable housing concentrates vulnerable people into disadvantaged areas.
• On average, moving house results in slight locational improvements.
• Some groups move house often and to increasingly less advantaged places.
• Place based interventions need to acknowledge the dynamics of population mobility.

This paper applies established methods from population geography to assess the impact of Australia’s emerging housing affordability crisis in shaping the distribution of Australia’s population into more or less advantaged places. Using a whole of population measure of locational advantage/disadvantage, we analyse the characteristics of movers, their reasons for moving, and their pre and post move residential outcomes. We find evidence at the population level of a ‘two-speed’ process, where - on average - Australians are moving to slightly more advantageous locations, but more vulnerable groups undertake more frequent, multi-step moves to disadvantaged areas. Housing affordability is found to be the key driver of the selective migration of some Australians into less advantaged places. The paper highlights the dynamic character of places, the increasing importance of housing affordability as a determinant of population distribution, and signals a need to look beyond simple place-based interventions.