Growth and improvement are two quite different concepts. At its most basic level ‘growth’ can be defined as ‘the process of increasing in size, value, amount, degree, volume, weight, height, complexity’ etc. It is very much weighted toward ‘quantum’. In a business sense it relates to market metrics such as penetration, development and diversification. In economics at a country level growth is most closely associated with the production of goods and services as measured by GDP. But getting bigger in say housing supply or GDP does not necessarily mean getting better or that the country as a whole is better off, especially if the benefits are not socially-diffuse. In this sense growth is more synonymous with social inequality or, to put it simply, winners and losers.

Improvement on the other hand can be defined as ‘the process of making something better whether in quality, value, condition, or the state of getting better’. The difference between the two concepts is starkly evident in policy approaches taken by countries aimed at addressing housing access, affordability and quality. Here in New Zealand almost all policy over the last 25 or so years has been focused on increasing the supply of land on which to build more market-priced housing. The policies have been founded on the somewhat dodgy neo-liberal thinking that simply increasing supply will somehow magically improve housing affordability. The policy approach has been a complete failure and New Zealand has recorded some of the worst housing price inflation and overburden costs in the OECD. This is frankly unsurprising given that ~96% of all housing stock in New Zealand is ‘market-priced’ and where the key market actors are in it for one thing only — making as much money as possible.

In his book Capital economist Thomas Piketty calls these market actors the rentier society and sums up inequality implicit in the ‘free market’ as “r>g”. Essentially the rate of return on private capital (r) sought by such rentiers is greater than growth in the economy (g), which he contests “has nothing to do with market imperfections and will not disappear as markets become freer and more competitive”, an economic idea he dismisses as an “illusion”. For anyone still clinging to the belief that economic growth in the order of 3-4% p.a. is the best or only way we can improve social equality Thomas Piketty offers another pertinent insight where he notes “…there is no historical example of a country at the world technological frontier whose growth in per capital output exceeded 1.5 percent over a lengthy period of time.” It’s in the interests of those controlling capital for economic growth to be as high as possible but sustained high levels are unrealistic and growth, in the form of increased housing supply, will not lead directly to improvements in housing access or affordability.