It's NOT just about housing.
It's more in this neighborhood: We geezers need to have relatively secure income producing places in which to park our assets. TWO parent families with at least one decent job with children tend to need sources of capital so they can take out mortgages, education loans, and so forth. It's a match made in heaven! Our kids have left home and are earning. We lend them money so they can build capital and in exchange we get income.
But if people stop having kids or if they have them while they live on the dole because they aren't married, or if they just don't work, they don't need to carry as much debt or they aren't able to carry much debt.
The single parent and the non-income earning adult needs transfer payments and seems to have the political clout to get them. This tends to make it harder for everyone to build capital. It also makes is harder for those who have managed to build capital to find relatively safe places to park it and use it to produce income.
THis was the wakeup call for me:
Now, consider this fact: America’s population has risen from 200 million to 300 million since 1970, while the total number of two-parent families with children is the same today as it was when Richard Nixon took office, at 25 million.
That’s all true, but not directly related to the problem of “more housing than occupants”.