[novok]

There are many developed countries with very large middle classes, such as japan, korea and large parts of europe that didn't go with the car dependent lifestyle and make everything but suburbs literally illegal to build and created policies to boost home ownership, such as the 30-yr government backed mortgages and the mortgage interest tax deduction.

The modern american middle class grew because of the post war economic boom and it being the only industrial economy left standing, along with many other structural advantages, such as a large population, a safe geopolitical region and huge amounts of natural resources. It wasn't because of suburbs, the suburb boom happened because of white flight.

There are countries with higher homeownership rates, such as spain, and it really hasn't done them much good. Home ownership rates do not really matter for how well your economy is doing: https://qz.com/167887/germany-has-one-of-the-worlds-lowest-h...