Abstract
The housing policy after the war has been pursuing mainly how many houses have been supplied, not taking it into account whether one could afford to pay his house rent or to pay for his house, which has rather been neglected completely therfore the research for that field with little data to go upon has not been done properly. In this study report, we use the income and rent data of Housing Survey of Japan 1958-1978 though they are not perfect material, and we try to figure out income elasticity for house rent payment; so that we want to show you how much common people of our country have participated after the war into activities to better housing circumstances. The results of this study are as follow : 1. Consumer's preference toward a rented house has been going down since the high time of 1968. 2. In 1978 they tended to use in general for a rented house inferior goods and it made for the first time the elasticity below zero. 3. Looking at it by a kind of a house, the worse qualities houses i.e. wooden houses, worn-out old houses, and so on privately owned rented houses, both exclusive and joint use of facilities they are in advanced stage of inferior goods. 4. On the whole, people prefer to own their houses in accordance with improvement of economic and social surroundings.
