Kováts Bence: The Financialisation of Housing and Housing-related Family Support in Hungary
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4. Housing-related family support in Hungary
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4.2. The development of housing-related parental support in numbers
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4.2.2. Intergenerational co-residence

4.2.2. Intergenerational co-residence

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

In pre-capitalist Hungary, it was common practice for generations to live together in order to maximise the labour of the household in farming. In villages, young couples chose their place of residence following the principle of patrilocality strengthening traditional gender roles: generally, sons remained in the parental home after marriage and brought their wives there as well. This practice was important in communities living off agriculture as a means of sharing labour in cultivating land, thus increasing the family’s wealth. Based on ethnologic evidence, Faragó (2000) reports that sons took over the position of the head of household from their father around the age of 40 and only among some ethnic minorities did adults become independent earlier. Thereby, fathers and sons mostly never moved out of the parental house while mothers and daughters rarely remained in their parental home for their entire life (ibid.).

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The traditional form of intergenerational co-residence started to decrease from the turn of the 19th and 20th century in villages as a result of urbanisation, industrialisation, the decline of fertility and the spread of neolocal residence. Still, before WWII, one fourth of households were extended (Faragó, 2000). Though the collectivisation of small farms at the beginning of the 1960s gave a further blow to traditional co-residence, in 1979, patrilocal residence could still be found: 10% of males aged 45-51 lived with their parents for their entire life while 17% left, but moved back to them (Sik 1984, p. 362).

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The rise of a new type of non-traditional intergenerational co-residence induced by housing unaffordability attracted the attention of sociologists at the end of the 1970s (H. Sas, 1978; Hoffmann, 1981; Rédei, Salamin and Újvári, 1984). The emergence of unaffordability-induced intergenerational co-residence and the fall of the traditional form of it is a trend similar to the emergence of previously unaccepted forms of co-residence due to housing unaffordability observed in Japan by Takagi and Silverstein (2006) presented in Section 3.2.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

In his work about the increasing economic hardship faced by young adults in the 1980s, Harcsa (1986, p. 325) exemplifies housing problems by highlighting that around half of young married couples co-resided with their parents in the middle of the decade. In a similar vein, H. Sas’s (1978) study of rural multi-generational households concludes that intergenerational co-residence was no longer induced by the labour pooling necessary for the cultivation of peasant holdings, instead, it was fuelled by the limited access to housing. Young adults remained in the parental household only temporarily, until they obtained housing.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Sik’s (1984, pp. 377–381) multi-generational comparison of the distribution of grandparents and parents having co-resided with their adult children also suggests that in the postwar period intergenerational co-residence became more often induced by unaffordability, and less by a living but slowly declining rural tradition. Data about the distribution of intergenerational co-residence in the population by education, residence and engagement in agriculture signal a shift in inter-class differences. Intergenerational co-residence provided by the grandparent generation to the parent generation was more prominent in the rural low-status group and much less the urban high-status group. However, intergenerational co-residence provided by the parent generation to their children became less affected by class, though differences remained visible. Rédei, Salamin and Újvári (1984), and Vajda and Zelenay (1984) reported young adults in agricultural employment were overrepresented among people not in intergenerational co-residence (see Section 4.3.2).

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Rédei, Salamin and Újvári (1984, p. 162) highlighted the share of people living independently after marriage or leaving the parental home decreased significantly before the 1980s: 67% of households with a head under 34 years did not live in a separate dwelling, while the same figure was 52% for the cohort above 50. Sik’s (1984) multi-generational data on the provision of co-residence to children by both the grandparent and the parent generation suggest the parent generation provided co-residence in a much higher share than the grandparent generation. While only 11% of the parent generation received intergenerational co-residence from the grandparent generation, 30% of them provided intergenerational co-residence to their children (Sik, 1984, pp. 378–380).
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Figure 4. Share of people in the three age categories living with their parents.
Source: own calculations based on http://www.nepszamlalas2001.hu/hun/kotetek/gycs/tables/load1_2.html
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

In the 1990s, rising unemployment, inflation, the abolition of preferential mortgages and the halt in housing subsidies in the first half of the decade became significant barriers for young adults to gain access to housing. The increase in intergenerational co-residence seems to be a natural consequence of these developments. The share of employed adults aged 15-29 living independently decreased from 52% in 1980 to 50% in 1990 and 47% in 1996 (Székely, 2002, p. 116). Murinkó (2013) also took note of the fall in the share of young adults living independently.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Census data about the share of young adults aged 20-34 co-residing with their parents show a significant rise between 1980 and 2001 (see Figure 4.). Most remarkable is the rise in the 25-29 age group where the number of people living with their parents doubled since 1980. The increase in the 30-34 cohort is milder while increase in the 20-24 age group can also be caused by the spread of the phenomenon of emerging adulthood characterised by longer studies and a later start of independent living (Arnett, 2000; Vaskovics, 2000). EU-SILC data recorded since 2005 confirm an increase in intergenerational co-residence until 2010 and a stagnation since then (see Figure 5). A cross-European comparison shows intergenerational co-residence rose in Hungary at the highest pace in the EU between 2008 and 2012 (Medgyesi and Nagy, 2014, pp. 305–06).
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Figure 5. Share of young adults aged 18-34 living with their parents in Hungary. Source: Eurostat (2020)
 
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