Spatial and gender disparities in rental affordability among young adults: The case of Buenos Aires

Source abstract

This paper examines spatial and gender disparities in rental affordability among young adults (age 18–35) in the city of Buenos Aires. Using a Quantile Regression Forest algorithm, we generate a 20-meter resolution rental price map and combine it with income data disaggregated by sex, age, and quintile to estimate potential access to the rental market under three income-allocation thresholds (30%, 50%, and 70%) and to measure inequity in urban access with the Gini coefficient. Results show that young women face systematically greater restrictions than men: allocating 30% of income to rent, 25.4% of the city is unaffordable to women, versus only 2.6% for men, a gap that widens sharply among those 18–23 years olds (78.3% versus 5.7%). Variable importance analysis indicates that the socioeconomic composition of the neighborhoods, rather than access to urban facilities, is the strongest predictor of rental prices. The study concludes that these gender gaps are structural, rooted in labor-market wage disparities rather than housing prices alone, and proposes a replicable, high-resolution methodology for identifying pockets of spatial exclusion and informing targeted housing policy.