Housing Careers and Urban Structure

Abstract

By identity, changes in the number of households in any locality are determined by either natural rates of population increase (along with any associated changes in headship rates) or by moves between different locations. The former involves the creation of new households, whereas the latter involves a redistribution of existing households. Although this is true whatever the spatial dimension — nation, region or metropolitan area — the relative importance differs with each. Typically, the smaller the spatial scale, the more important is moving or migration relative to “domestically induced” change. At the national level, migration only occurs internationally, usually in response to differences in economic and political conditions. But such flows are often dominated by domestic rates of population increase, although this depends on the size of the country and its degree of openness¹. Increases in the number of households in recent years have frequently occurred as a result of rises in headship rates rather than population per se as average household sizes have fallen. Falling average household sizes and the growth of single person households has been a distinctive trend in many industrialised countries.

Australia, for example, has traditionally relied on high levels of immigration.