Fergus Fricke purchased a house in Balmain in 1974 for about $30,000, which was about twice his annual salary. It is now worth about $1.9 million, 31 times his annual pension.

He’s rich, but dispirited. Mr. Fricke’s property wealth provides him with no extra emotional or material comfort. He would prefer to live in a more egalitarian community — the kind of society that once defined Australian identity. “It’s a wealthy population,” said Mr. Fricke, 75, a former engineering professor. “A working-class person can’t afford even the rents in Balmain.”

Feeling prosperous because of their unexpected jump in wealth, landowning Australians have become politically complacent. The great social movements centered on inequality — workers’ rights, the place of women in society and the treatment of indigenous peoples — that influenced Australian politics in the 1970s and 1980s have faded.

Australia’s broad welfare system and high taxes ensure that those who don’t own homes have decent medical care and access to state-run schools and colleges. Few homeless people are visible on the streets. Following and predicting interest rates have become the national pastime.

Higher property prices entrench the advantages of the wealthy. Australia has never been a more unequal society, social researchers say. Income of the top 5 percent of earners rose 78 percent from 1995 to 2012, while income of the bottom 20 percent rose 44 percent, according to a study last year by the Australian Council of Social Service, an advocacy group.

Among the 48 percent of Australians who don’t own homes, women over 50 years old are the most vulnerable. When the researchers Susan Thompson and Peter Phibbs interviewed renters for a study a few years ago, they found the cost of property was contributing to malnutrition.

Elderly women, who are more likely to rent because lower wages meant they couldn’t save as much as men throughout their lives, were paying their landlords first and utilities second and buying food last. “They were eating slices of white bread with all they could find on the last few days before pension day,” Mr. Phibbs said to me this month. “That’s depressing in a rich society.”