This theory predicts a massive happiness gap between renters and homeowners, but I'm unaware of any studies showing this.

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OutOfHere a day ago | parent [-]

As someone who has both owned multiple residences and rented multiple residences, I can confirm that ownership brings substantial happiness and renting brings substantial stress. The primary exception is when renting is cheap, but that is no longer the case since raises do not keep up with rents. With ownership, particularly in the absence of a mortgage, one can just choose to not have a job for long stretches, and this is basically impossible when renting unless one is exceedingly wealthy. As such, the clause that a mortgage adds unhappiness is an important one.

	▲	zahlman a day ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but that's demonstrably more to do with the actual financial position than the ownership status. If you own the house and no longer pay a mortgage then you're ipso facto wealthier — although you presumably do still pay property tax. During the period of the mortgage, while rent wouldn't necessarily be cheap, it would be cheaper than the TCO of the house. The overall financial consideration is complex and pro-ownership dogma is just dogma: see e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4H9LL7A-nQ. More importantly in my opinion, though (and especially for single childless people), rental housing is available in smaller and finer-grained quantities.