Of course, part of that 'upgrading' is that homes in a lot of urban areas have become impractically expensive for anyone who wants enough space for a family... but you still have to buy in ASAP if you don't want to be left behind by further market inflation. So cue 'starter home' nonsense.

There is/was a fairly straightforward explanation for the fiscal stimulation of home ownership and in the 60s government was not very coy about describing it: home ownership ties people into their respective communities by giving them a very tangible piece of "skin in the game". When you own a very expensive (relative to your total net worth) piece of real estate, that gives you a real incentive to take care of your local community. This in turn improves the stability of the society as a whole, since the large group of homeowners is not in favor of any real upheaval which might threaten the status quo.

> that gives you a real incentive to take care of your local community. This in turn improves the stability of the society as a whole, since the large group of homeowners is not in favor of any real upheaval which might threaten the status quo.

“take care of your local community” and “[preserve] the status quo” are placed in fairly direct opposition often in daily life. unless you want for children to live in the home they were born in forever, no new infrastructure to be built, etc. who really wants the status quo anywhere to be maintained for 30 years? most people i know, most communities i’m involved in, crave more novelty than that.

I meant "preserving the status quo" as meaning "society remains roughly in the same shape", ie no violent upheavals, revolutions or other drastic changes that would disrupt the ability of an average citizen to keep making a living. Think overthrowing congress in favor of a military dictatorship, or a couple of states seceding and trying to take the nuclear weapons stationed there with them. In that sense most of the western world hasn't seen that much "real" upheaval in the past century despite massive technological changes. We still have democracies that operate on mostly the same principles as a hundred years ago, sometimes with many of the same political parties as a hundred years ago as well.

Relatively slow improvements to living conditions are fine, as that does not cause massive disruption for the average citizen and does not threaten whichever groups are in power.

I think there are pros and cons to population movement, its not all negative. There is now more supply and demand which creates a more robust market full of choices. Obviously a big negative is the massive price increases that either completely price groups out or burden other groups in large debt, but I'll leave my points at that.

Geographical mobility is far lower now than it has ever been. This is generally considered a bad thing: people are staying in places where they can only subsist on transfer payments, and growth industries in prosperous places are limited by labor.