Kováts Bence: The Financialisation of Housing and Housing-related Family Support in Hungary
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2. Theoretical foundations
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2.1. The role of family in the economy and society
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2.1.1. Family in the political economy
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2.1.1.4. The family, the neglected source of welfare under capitalism

2.1.1.4. The family, the neglected source of welfare under capitalism

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Esping-Andersen’s (1990) welfare regime theory locating countries on the commodification/de-commodification continuum came under intense critique from both a feminist and a trans-Western viewpoint. The basis of both types of criticism was that Esping-Andersen’s analysis paid too little attention to unpaid labour of family (and community) members that can be considered neither commodified nor de-commodified, but could be described in terms of the integration mechanisms associated with pre-capitalist societies, reciprocity and householding described earlier.

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The feminist critique was first articulated by Lewis (1992) and Orloff (1993), arguing that domestic and care work carried out to a larger extent by women is not commodified, but it is in fact welfare provided within the family. For this reason, they argued, the family is an important source of welfare redistribution besides the market and the state, and should be incorporated in welfare research as a new dimension which can, however, be significantly modified by state action.

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Parallel to the feminist critique, a number of writings in political economy suggested the geographic extension of Esping-Andersen’s model focusing only on highest-income Western countries of the world, but excluding other regions. Authors examining Southern European (SE) political economies argue that the family remained an important source of welfare in the region. They explain this fact by its delayed modernisation. While in North-Western Europe (NWE), labour has been commodified in the process of large-scale industrialisation and urbanisation, in SE industrialisation did not affect large part of the population and people not being part of the formal labour market, “the majority of the labour force […] could be characterised as pre-commodified” (Leibfried, 1993; Castles, 1994; Mingione, 1995; Ferrera, 1996; Allen et al., 2004, p. 117). In this approach, family labour represents integration mechanisms associated with pre-capitalist societies such as reciprocity and householding that remained more widespread in less industrialised countries.

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Not all authors explain widespread familialism from a political-economic perspective, but highlight culture, most notably religion, as the drive for strong family-based welfare. Catholicism in SE (Castles, 1994) and Confucionism in East Asia (Jones, 1993) value the traditional family and strengthen its welfare-providing function.

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As a result of the above criticism, in the welfare literature, there is now more emphasis on the role of the family both in terms of policies’ contribution to familialisation or de-familialisation (Lewis, 1992; Saraceno, 1997; Leitner, 2003; Szikra and Szelewa, 2010), and indicators measuring the extent of support by the family to its members (Esping-Andersen, 1999; Albertini, Kohli and Vogel, 2007; Berry, 2008; Albertini and Kohli, 2013; Isengard, König and Szydlik, 2018).

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The most complete work encompassing both the extent of family welfare and policies fostering it is Esping-Andersen’s (1999) updated typology published following the criticism of his earlier work. He complemented his original analysis of commodification and de-commodification by the dimension of familialism. By evaluating different indicators of family welfare such as women’s employment rate; prevalence and costs of public and private day care and elderly home care coverage; public spending on family services; women’s unpaid hours; and co-residence with adult children, he found his original typology of the “three worlds of welfare” justified.

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The social democratic regime characterised by a high extent of de-commodification is also characterised by a high extent of de-familialisation: many of the traditional welfare-providing functions of the family are taken over by the state. It is not surprising that the conservative welfare regime building on pre-capitalist traditions of status-based welfare provision is characterised by a high level of familialism: the state not only lags behind the social democratic welfare state in developing institutions to take over tasks traditionally performed by the family, but through subsidies it also facilitates the provision of care and domestic work within the family. In the liberal welfare regime where commodification is most advanced, the state intervenes less in family welfare, which results in only modest de-familialisation through the market: liberal countries fall in between conservative and social democratic clusters. Although on some indicators, Japan and SE countries are characterised by a higher level of familialisation, they are argued not to form a separate cluster (Esping-Andersen, 1999).
 

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Figure 1 Main institutions of wealth redistribution in capitalist societies and social processes materialising through them (in brackets).
Source: Author
 

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Works focusing on intergenerational support confirm the validity of his original typology with one significant difference: Southern Europe (SE) is characterised by more support within generations of the family than conservative countries. Support by the family can consist of labour and material support, and of co-residence with adult family members. In North-European countries belonging to the social democratic cluster, intergenerational support (both labour and financial) tends to be frequent but less intense, and intergenerational co-residence is uncommon. At the same time, in SE countries intergenerational support tends to be less frequent but more intense, and young adults typically co-reside with their parents until marriage. Countries belonging to the conservative cluster fall in between while liberal countries could not be examined in the comparison (Albertini, Kohli and Vogel, 2007; Albertini and Kohli, 2013).

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Welfare research focusing on the CEE region mostly highlights large variation within the region regarding market regulations, policy and familialism. Authors tend to emphasise that different influences, such as corporatism before WWII, socialism in the state socialist period and liberalism advocated by international advisory bodies after the regime change, created different layers in CEE welfare states. However, since different influences have highly varied among countries, the region exhibits such great diversity in commodification, de-commodification and familialism that authors usually refrain from categorising the region as one separate welfare regime and tend to divide countries into smaller groups within CEE (Deacon, 2000; Manning, 2004; Inglot, 2008; Szelewa and Polakowski, 2008; Cerami and Vanhuysse, 2009; Szikra and Szelewa, 2010; Bohle and Greskovits, 2012; Inglot, Szikra and Raţ, 2012).
 
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