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SeedPublished 2026-10-23

Immigration and housing costs

Immigration and migrant workers appear on 141 recent papers, mostly in economics, with 42 in July–September 2026 against about 30 per quarter before. Only 18 carry a housing, rent or house-price keyword. Housing costs are now the loudest argument in immigration politics. How much of rent growth do arrivals explain, and how much is a lack of building?

economicshousingmigration

What prompted this#

Since October 2025, 141 papers carry an immigration or migrant keyword (116 in economics journals): "immigration" on 19, "migrant workers" on 12, "immigration policy" on 8. The quarter to September 2026 had 42 such papers against about 30 per quarter over the nine months before. Only 18 of the 141 also carry a housing, rent, house-price or home-price keyword.

Questions#

  • In cities with large recent inflows (Canada, Australia, Germany, the UK), how much of rent growth is attributable to immigration once construction, interest rates and incomes are held fixed?
  • Do immigrants raise rents mainly where housing supply is constrained by regulation?
  • Do policies that cut immigration to ease housing, such as Canada's 2024 caps, lower rents, and at what cost to construction labour?

Data that could help#

Regional migration flows, rents and house prices, building permits and housing supply elasticity estimates.

Next step#

Estimate the rent response to immigration inflows across regions, interacted with measures of housing supply constraints, for 2015–2025.

The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26
KeywordPapers, last 30 daysRankPapers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26*Papers, last 36 months
immigration2#130349
immigration policy0–35
housing market3#776123

Markdown version of this note: /ideas/immigration-and-housing-costs.md

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Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Immigration and housing costs. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/immigration-and-housing-costs

@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-immigration-and-housing-costs,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Immigration and housing costs},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/immigration-and-housing-costs}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}

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