alt Hacker NewsLooking at the statistics that are used to measure growth and performance at a population level are such a great window into how they themselves are opinionated stances.
The two measures are both great measures of house ownership that measure different things. The article frames the second one as better, and if you are looking to see the ownership proportion of people (for example as they note to look at the numbers of young people who live with parents) thats great. If however you care about the housing development decisions that will incentivise owner occupancy you might care more about the standard owner occupancy per household.
I often see this with respect to GDP/GDP per capita vs mean income and other economic measures, but its great to see a non economic measure like this compared in this way.
> If however you care about the housing development decisions that will incentivise owner occupancy
Genuine question: who, precisely, cares about "incentivising owner occupancy" as a policy goal? What interest does that serve and why should the government prioritize maximizing that metric?
Basically right now we measure "what fraction of homes are occupied by an owner" and not "what fraction of people live in their own home?". It seems bleedingly obvious that the latter is the number we should be maximizing, if either. And in particular it seems to me that a lot of argument about the former is actually using it as a proxy for the latter anyway.
No one cares about the poor homes who don't have local owners!