For the above reasons, in the current inquiry only housing-related parental inter vivos financial support is meant by the term financial support. Financial support is hard to measure, therefore evidence about it is relatively scant. Although several analyses have been published about the development of non-housing related financial support, and the factors impacting them on the macro and micro level, they also consider smaller amounts of gifts that are not provided for housing purchase (Albertini, Kohli and Vogel, 2007; Berry, 2008; Albertini and Kohli, 2013; Albertini, Tosi and Kohli, 2018; Isengard, König and Szydlik, 2018). Therefore, mechanisms affecting and patterns of non-housing related financial support may be very different from those marking housing-related support. For example, the finding of Albertini, Kohli and Vogel (2007) about more frequent but smaller amounts of financial support provided to children in Northern Europe, and less frequent but higher amounts of support provided in the South may signal that in SE support for home ownership is more widespread than in the North where renting is the norm. Yet, support provided in high amounts may not necessarily be housing-related but may serve another purpose, e.g. it can be a graduation gift or a wedding gift. Due to this ambiguity, large cross-country datasets recording non-housing related financial support cannot be used to draw conclusions about differences in housing-related financial support among housing systems or welfare regimes. For this reason, non-housing related financial gifts are not analysed in the book.

Though a pan-European overview of the development of financial support and the causes behind it cannot be provided due to the lack of a large international dataset, national case studies do offer valuable information about both differences between welfare regimes and recent trends. Denmark, where gifts before home purchase are virtually non-existent, represents one end of the spectrum (Kolodziejczyk and Leth-Petersen, 2013). Based on a survey recorded in 2002 and 2007 in two waves, in the Netherlands 9% of the population between 18-79 received home ownership support (Mulder and Smits, 2013, p. 104). In France around 26% of homeowners reported they received a gift or bequest before home purchase in 1991-1992 (Spilerman and Wolff, 2012, p. 221).

In semi-peripheral countries higher frequency of support was recorded. In Italy, about one third of homeowners received bequest or financial transfer for the purchase of their home, or received a dwelling as a gift in 1991 (Guiso and Jappelli, 2002, p. 335). In Czechia, 44% of parents with adult children provided or were planning to provide assistance to their children to acquire an owner-occupied dwelling in 2016 (Lux, Sunega and Kážmér, 2021, p. 1305). Cirman (2008, p. 311) denotes 29% of the Slovenian population received intergenerational support to access home ownership in 2005.

Though different national surveys recorded slightly different types of support, data enable a rough comparison. National figures from the three case studies, similarly to intergenerational co-residence, point towards the existence of a core semi-periphery divide, however, France clusters with the latter group despite its similarity with the core based on my cluster analysis performed on various indicators (Kováts, 2021). Since France is the only conservative country among the case studies and countries belonging to the liberal welfare regime are not included, the similarity between France and semi-peripheral countries may be interpreted as the existence of a conservative-SE-CEE cluster on the one hand, and a social democratic (and liberal) cluster on the other hand.