IESET.
Hypotheses·housing·vienna_social_housing_rent_burden_comparative

Vienna's sustained social-housing programme has delivered lower rent burdens and housing-cost inflation than comparable European capitals without supply collapse, a counter-example to the rent-control-supply-destruction narrative.

PARTIALengine/runs/vienna_social_housing_rent_burden_comparative

partial — Only the rent-burden primary held; the HPI-no-runaway primary failed. AT overburden gap -2.8pp; AT cum HPI log-change +74.6% vs pool +43.5% (+31.1pp).

confidence cueThe result is useful, but not decisive. Treat it as a clue, not a settled conclusion.

policy briefMixed or noisy

In ordinary language

Does the housing rule being tested make homes easier to build, rent, or afford, or does it quietly reduce supply and push costs elsewhere?

plain answer

The evidence is suggestive but not decisive. Only the rent-burden primary held; the HPI-no-runaway primary failed.

why it matters

Housing policy affects rents, mobility, household budgets, and construction. The test looks for measurable effects rather than relying on slogans.

how the test works

It compares 12 country or place units from 1971 to 2023, using a descriptive design.

what was measured
What changed
  • Vienna social housing indicator
What we checked
  • Housing cost to income ratio
  • Rent hicp index
  • Dwellings completed per 1000
what this does not prove

A single test is not the whole truth. It narrows the claim under a specific sample, time period, and method. Strong policy conclusions need the pattern to survive nearby tests, alternative data, and serious objections.

verification

No evidence packet has been generated yet.

Results

engine/runs/vienna_social_housing_rent_burden_comparative
Loading chart…

Who has skin in the game — schools predicting on this

1 school list this hypothesis as a test of their position. The chips below are school-level scoreboard outcomes, not a second hypothesis verdict.

hypothesis verdict vs scoreboard outcome

The banner verdict judges this hypothesis as written. The scoreboard asks whether each school's polarity-corrected prediction was right. Raw status is not a school win: SUPPORTED supports schools that needed SUPPORTED, but refutes schools that needed REFUTED.

Democratic Socialism (Bernsteinian revisionism + modern)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-call

Pre-registration

pre-registered
first-spec commit 4c8ce8e · 2026-07-18T22:11:21Z

Vienna's sustained social-housing programme has delivered lower rent burdens and housing-cost inflation than comparable European capitals without supply collapse, a counter-example to the rent-control-supply-destruction narrative.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

PRIMARY 1 (RENT BURDEN): mean Austria housing-cost-overburden rate (Eurostat ilc_mded01, hhtyp=TOTAL, incgrp=TOTAL, unit=PC) over 2010-2024 must trail the unweighted comparator-pool mean by at least 2.0 percentage points (i.e. AT - pool <= -2.0pp). PRIMARY 2 (NO HPI RUNAWAY): cumulative AT log-change in Eurostat prc_hpi_a (purchase=TOTAL with DW_EXST fallback, unit=I10_A_AVG) over 2010-2024 must not exceed the unweighted comparator-pool mean by more than +5 percentage points. Higher AT HPI growth than peers is consistent with supply tightness — the rent-control-supply- destruction narrative the claim disputes. Verdict logic: SUPPORTED if BOTH primaries hold, refuted if NEITHER holds, partial if exactly one holds. INFORMATIVE: AT mean monthly rent-CPI yoy (prc_hicp_manr coicop=CP041) minus pool mean. Reported but not gating. METHOD_VALID: ilc_mded01 and prc_hpi_a must each cover AT and at least 6 of 10 comparator countries with at least 10 years of overlapping data; otherwise emit `inconclusive`.

formal test & threshold
test:      vienna_at_vs_european_capital_pool_dual_threshold
threshold: PRIMARY 1: (AT mean overburden % - pool mean overburden %) <= -2.0pp. PRIMARY 2: (AT cumulative log HPI growth - pool mean cumulative log HPI growth) <= +0.05 (i.e. +5pp). Both primaries 2010-2024 inclusive.

Method

Template
descriptive
Sample
12 countries · 1971 – 2023
Evidence type
associational

Cross-city descriptive comparison Vienna vs matched European-capital donor pool 1971-2023. Plot rent-burden, HICP-rents, and supply-completion trajectories side-by-side; report rank-position of Vienna at 5-year intervals. Caveat: Vienna's pre-WWI municipal land-bank inheritance is unusual — descriptive contrast cannot identify rent-control vs land-bank channel. Flagged TODO swarm-6e for synthetic-control extension when enough donor-city panel coverage lands.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
housing_cost_to_income_ratio
outcome
eurostat:ilc_mded01tier 1
level
rent_hicp_index
outcome
eurostat:prc_hicp_aindtier 1
log_yoy
dwellings_completed_per_1000
outcome
eurostat:bldg_pi_lttier 1
log
vienna_social_housing_indicator
treatment
constructed:indicator = 1 for AUT (capital = Vienna with municipal social-housing dominant share); 0 for matched European-capital cotier 5
indicator
log_gdp_per_capita
control
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KDtier 2
log
log_population
control
world_bank_wdi:SP.POP.TOTLtier 2
log
real_mortgage_rate
control
ecb:mfi_lending_ratestier 1
level

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Vienna social-housing rent-burden comparative

Verdict: partial — Only the rent-burden primary held; the HPI-no-runaway primary failed. AT overburden gap -2.8pp; AT cum HPI log-change +74.6% vs pool +43.5% (+31.1pp).

Summary

  • AT mean housing-cost-overburden rate 2010-2024: 18.4%.
  • Comparator-pool unweighted mean: 21.2% (n=10 countries).
  • Gap (AT minus pool): -2.8pp (threshold for SUPPORTED: <= -2.0pp).
  • AT cumulative HPI log-change 2010-2024: +74.6%; pool mean +43.5%; gap +31.1pp (threshold for SUPPORTED: <= +5pp).
  • Informative: AT mean monthly rent-CPI yoy 3.90% vs pool 2.11%.

Method

Country-level descriptive comparison of Austria (Vienna's social-housing model is the dominant rental form in the capital) against an unweighted pool of European-capital countries: DEU, FRA, NLD, BEL, DNK, SWE, IRL, ESP, ITA, CZE. Period 2010-2024 (HPI series start in 2010 for AT).

Two pre-registered primary tests:

  1. Rent burden gap. Mean of ilc_mded01 (housing-cost overburden rate, total household, total income, % of population) for AT minus unweighted comparator-country mean. Threshold: AT must trail by >= 2pp.
  2. No HPI runaway. Cumulative log-change in prc_hpi_a (annual HPI, purchase=TOTAL with DW_EXST fallback) over the window for AT minus pool mean. Threshold: AT must not exceed the pool by more than +5pp.

Informative-only: mean monthly rent-CPI yoy (prc_hicp_manr, coicop=CP041) for AT vs pool, annualised by simple mean of the monthly yoy series.

Caveats

  • Country-level comparison; Vienna is dominant in the AT rental stock but not the entire country. Capital-city subnational series are not in vintages — when they land this hypothesis can be respecced as a capital-vs-capital cohort.
  • GBR (London) excluded: Eurostat coverage ends 2018-2020 due to Brexit reporting changes.
  • HPI window starts at 2010 (AT first observation in prc_hpi_a); earlier-period dynamics are not tested here.
  • Eurostat building-permits / completions series (bldg_pi_lt in the spec) is not in vintages; the supply-collapse falsifier uses HPI-runaway as a proxy (a true supply collapse would show as AT prices outrunning peers). When permit data lands, supply growth should be re-tested directly.

Data

  • eurostat:ilc_mded01 (housing-cost overburden rate)
  • eurostat:prc_hpi_a (house price index, annual)
  • eurostat:prc_hicp_manr (HICP yoy, coicop=CP041 actual rents)

Notes

Stub seeded from a democratic-socialist school prediction about Vienna's social-housing programme delivering lower rent burdens without supply collapse. Comparator-capital selection is critical and Vienna's land-bank inheritance is unusual; needs human review of matched-comparator strategy.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.