as borders open and restrictions ease, though perhaps at different rates to previous years. similarly, while many of the people moved out of larger population centres to escape the virus, or the lockdowns, some of them might return to their previous locations over time. it is difficult to disentangle these transitory effects from the more lasting ones. there will be at least some cases of people moving further out from the city centre, because long commutes will not seem so unpleasant if you only need to do it a couple of days a week. and where full - time working from home is possible, ‘ work from home ’ really starts to mean ‘ work from anywhere ’. so for some it has been possible to move to an entirely different population centre. these bigger changes are almost certainly going to affect only a minority of the population. many of us would not leave our existing social networks and support systems lightly. and as i have already mentioned, ‘ work from anywhere ’ isn't really feasible for everyone. but there will be some shifts, at least at the margin, which could alter patterns of relative growth. these could matter for plans for urban expansion and the provision of new infrastructure, even if the distribution of population doesn't shift wholesale. the task for public policy the pandemic is not over. australia has seen a swift bounce back, but many other economies are still recovering or contending with outbreaks. during the height of the pandemic, when restrictions on activity are tight, the task for policy is to build a bridge to the recovery. as economies move through recovery to the expansion phase, the focus naturally turns to sustaining that expansion. that means ensuring that demand continues to be supported for as long as spare capacity remains. absorbing spare capacity and achieving full employment is an important national priority. full employment is a worthy goal for its own sake, given how important jobs and income are for people's welfare. it is also a precondition for achieving the rates of wages growth that would be consistent with inflation being sustainably within the 2 – 3 per cent target range that the bank is mandated to achieve. in the context of the post - pandemic recovery, there is another reason to support demand : to help enable any structural adjustments that might be needed. it is far easier for a firm to change business models when demand is robust, and far easier for a worker to switch industries or careers when there are plenty of jobs available. to the extent that the post

coming from genuine savings, it doesn ’ t have to be as high as 20 per cent. so it ’ s surprising that as housing prices have risen, the distribution of loan - to - valuation ratios – the converse of the deposit – hasn ’ t shifted up over time ( graph 6 ). if anything it has declined in the past few years for which we have data. it ’ s not entirely clear why this is. and because a high loan - to - valuation ratio does imply higher risk both for the borrower and the lender, it might not be such a bad thing. 7 / 12 bis central bankers'speeches but it does suggest that, again, the situation is more complex than a simple summary statistic can capture. one reason why first home buyers haven ’ t needed to increase loan - to - valuation ratios might be that more of them are getting help from friends and family to accumulate the deposit. careful analysis of the hilda survey dataset shows that the share of first home buyers receiving that help has been increasing over the decades, but it actually remains low ( graph 7 ). 8 / 12 bis central bankers'speeches it is common to focus on the different outcomes for owners versus renters in purely financial terms. another aspect of inequality i would like to talk about today is security of tenure. a range of different data sources confirm that although young people move more often than older people, the big difference is between renters and owners ( graph 8 ). a similar pattern occurs in countries such as the united states ( bachmann and cooper 2014 ). 9 / 12 bis central bankers'speeches looking just at the group of households who can be tracked through the whole life of the hilda survey, and who didn ’ t switch between owning and renting at any stage, you can also see that renters were also more likely to have moved many times in that 13 - year period ( graph 9 ). 10 / 12 bis central bankers'speeches some earlier literature has suggested that transaction costs induce home owners to move less often than they might otherwise do, which makes it harder for them to take advantage of changing labour market opportunities ( oswald 1999 ). that effect doesn ’ t seem clear in australian data, so i would not draw that conclusion here ( flatau et al 2002 ). yet even without the transaction costs of selling a home – including tax, legal fees and agent commissions – we know that moving house can be disruptive and costly. so i question whether all those moves by rent