Objective and Subjective Assessments of the Financial Affordability of Housing in the Czech Republic during the 1990s

This study looks at assessments of the financial affordability of housing in the Czech Republic over the course of the 1990s, drawn from two mutually complementary perspectives: on the basis of verified data, detailing the levels of household income and expenditures and how they have evolved during the period under observation (objective perspective), and on the basis of the subjective responses given by respondents regarding how they percept their expenditures on housing and the level of these expenditures in relation to their household income (subjective perspective). The purpose of this is to verify whether households that, from the objective perspective, are considered to be the most at risk, owing to expenditures on housing, also genuinely identify themselves as such, and to examine what factors influence the respondents' subjective perception of their level of expenditures on housing. To this end, data from the Family Budget Surveys from the Czech Statistical Office was used, along with CVVM omnibus surveys from 1995-2001, and data from the survey Attitudes towards Housing in the Czech Republic 2001, carried out by the Socio-economic of Housing team at the Institute of Sociology AS CR in 2001.