This article is the seventh in the “Gallup World Poll at 20” series, examining two decades of global trends using data collected in more than 140 countries since 2006. Additional articles in the series will be published throughout 2026.
LONDON — Over the past 20 years, people’s satisfaction with their local housing market has gradually become less tethered to their own ability to afford housing, particularly in high-income countries. Instead, housing views increasingly reflect broader economic sentiment and people’s hopes for the future.
Median levels of satisfaction with affordable housing have remained mostly stable globally, sitting at 48% in 2025 — broadly in line with the 50% recorded in 2006. At the same time, reported personal difficulties with affording shelter have risen by double digits.
Link Between Personal Affordability and Local Satisfaction Collapses
The relationship between these global trends has fundamentally changed at the national level. In the past, Gallup has found that satisfaction with the availability of good, affordable housing has been high in countries where most people were not struggling to afford shelter. Over time, however, this relationship has eroded to the point that it is now modestly negative.
This shift becomes clear when comparing people’s ability to afford adequate shelter with their satisfaction with local housing across countries between 2008 and 2025. In 2008, the two were closely related, evident by the number of countries clustered along a line representing a strong relationship. By 2025, that connection had all but disappeared — and, if anything, had tilted slightly negative.
High-Income Countries Lead the Way in Changing Views
The growing disconnect between people’s ability to afford housing and market perceptions has been most notable in high-income countries. In 2008 and 2009, during the global financial crisis, the two measures were strongly positively related. That relationship has eroded faster in high-income countries than throughout the rest of the world, accelerating shortly before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There is now a moderately negative relationship between local satisfaction and personal affordability in high-income countries, compared with no meaningful association in the rest of the world.
For the past two decades, a steady median of nine in 10 adults across high-income countries have not reported any difficulties in personally affording adequate shelter. However, satisfaction with local housing conditions has declined over time, falling below the majority level for the first time in 2022 and remaining there since. In middle- and low-income countries, personal housing circumstances are more closely aligned with broader satisfaction with local housing markets, particularly since 2017.
The widening gulf between personal affordability and satisfaction with local markets is present in most high-income countries, with satisfaction crashing as personal affordability remains mostly stable. Predominantly English-speaking countries have seen some of the largest increases in the gap between the two measures, including Canada (up 30 percentage points between 2007-2011 and 2021-2025), New Zealand (up 27 points), the U.S. (up 24 points), Ireland (up 22 points) and Australia (up 16 points).
In all of these countries, apart from the U.S., there is now a gap of more than 50 points between the percentage who are personally able to afford shelter and the percentage who are satisfied with the availability of good, affordable housing where they live.
Economic Perceptions Become More Important Drivers of Local Housing Satisfaction
In 2007-2011, being able to afford shelter was associated with a seven-point increase in local housing satisfaction, controlling for other factors, but this has since declined to three points.
At the same time, people’s views of their local economy (from 10 to 13 points) and their feelings about their own household income (eight to 10 points) have grown to be more predictive of local housing satisfaction in high-income countries.
Shifting Views of Housing Linked to Wellbeing
The long-term reversal in the relationship between personal circumstances and local housing satisfaction carries real implications for people's lives, especially in high-income countries.
Satisfaction with local housing is one of many factors that contribute to people’s hope for the future, measured using the Cantril Scale, in which respondents rate their life today and their life in five years on a scale from zero to 10. Compared with other attitudinal and demographic factors, satisfaction plays a significant role in people’s predictions for their future, roughly on par with that of a country’s per-capita income and people’s level of education, and below only subjective feelings about household income. This is a large amount of explanatory weight for a question about the housing market, more than twice as much as people’s own ability to afford shelter.
Bottom Line
For many years, how people felt about their local housing situation was closely related to their own ability to pay for shelter, but that relationship has since reversed. Personal affordability is now less predictive of housing satisfaction than broader economic perceptions, and local satisfaction has become a bigger driver of hope for the future than people's own circumstances. This suggests the public is attuned to the lack of housing supply relative to demand, an issue that governments around the world increasingly face.
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For complete methodology and specific survey dates, please review Gallup's Country Data Set details. Learn more about how the Gallup World Poll works.
