The article presents a review of the research activities of the Socio-Economics of Housing research team. The Socio-economics of Housing team is one of the research teams at the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The main research activities of the team include sociological research concerning attitudes towards housing in the Czech Republic, international comparisons of housing policies and social housing systems, and econometric simulations of policy reforms, like rent deregulation, the introduction of housing allowance and social housing, housing finance, housing market efficiency, and house price indices.
The article focuses on the results of analyses of sociological research on how housing conditions affect the intended labour migration in the Czech Republic. The aim of the article is mainly to show, in reference to studies published in advanced countries, the effect of a housing tenure on the internal labour migration in the Czech environment. For this purpose the authors use a combination of quantitative and qualitative sociological methods (questionnaire surveys, focus groups). The results of the multi-dimensional logit models and the conclusions drawn from focus groups records indicate that housing tenure has a very significant effect on potential internal labour migration, even after controlling for the effect of other factors related to labour migration. This finding should be of substantial significance for the future direction of housing policy in the Czech Republic.
The aim of the article is an analysis of changes affecting the financial affordability of rental and owner-occupied housing over the course of the economic transformation in the Czech Republic. To evaluate housing affordability the authors used housing expenditures-to-income ratios and data files from the Czech Statistical Office. The objective of this article is also to draw attention to the need to modify standard indicators when measuring housing affordability in countries in transition. In this regard the authors particularly note the huge differences in affordability ratios between households living in the so-called 'privileged' and households living in the 'unprivileged' housing market sectors.