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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4.2.1. Labour support in construction and renovation

4.2.1. Labour support in construction and renovation

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Data on construction support are scarcely available. The only empirical studies that provide insight on the topic can be found in Hegedüs’s (1992) article about the development of self-build in Hungary in the period of state socialism, Sik’s (1988) monograph about 20th century development of reciprocal labour in Hungary, his other analysis of a survey recording data about grandparent-parent-child triads in 1979 through surveying parents between the age of 45 and 51 (Sik, 1984) and my earlier work estimating the trends in self-build between 1921 and 2013 (Kováts, 2022).

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Hegedüs’s (1992) work has already been discussed in relation to the transition approach introduced in Section 4.1. In his analysis, he uses data about self-provision, a category broader than self-build (see definition in Section 2.2.2), through which he argues that self-build declined after WWII but increased from the 1970s onwards due to the tolerance, and later outright support, of the state-socialist leadership. However, his self-provision data (ibid., p. 224) and Kocsis' (2006, 2009) account of the limited success of urban planners in restricting construction of single-family housing in the period even in the capital city. do not seem to support the author's claim that the level of self-build was low in the 1960s.

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Somewhat contradicting the transition perspective, in his monograph about reciprocal labour Sik (1988) argues that in housing construction reciprocal labour was relatively stable until 1988, however, evidence supporting this claim is rather scarce in his book. He also highlights that by the 1980s, collective construction transformed from a local practice involving a large part of rural communities loosely regulated by custom into a form of labour exchange in which the value of participants’ contribution is carefully noted by beneficiaries.

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In his other study about transfers among three generations, Sik (1984, pp. 361–363) found that 28% of all support provided to fathers by grandparents was construction support, which was only 24% in the parent-son nexus. Data suggest a slight decrease between the 1955-1965 period, when the parent generation constructed their housing, and the end of the 1970s, the time of recording the survey, when their children constructed housing units.

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Sik’s data are of limited use for the current inquiry for two reasons. On the one hand, he provided only the share of construction support within all support between two generations, therefore these data do not provide evidence about the absolute change in it. On the other hand, since a presumably significant share of self-builders in the child generation had not started constructing their own housing at the time the survey was recorded, data most probably underestimate the share of those receiving construction support.

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My work providing an estimate of the number of self-built housing units between 1921 and 2013 on the basis of historical sources on housing construction and housing statistics suggests that the extent of self-build was relatively stable during state-socialism while it virtually disappeared in the two decades after the regime change (Kováts, 2022). In comparison with the high fluctuation of public and speculative housing provision, self-build remained surprisingly stable in Hungary until the end of the 20th century and the trend line does not resemble the hypothesised U-shaped development suggested by Hegedüs and Tosics (1992b, Hegedüs 1992).

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While historical sources, as well as data, suggest self-construction was on the decline in the interwar period, it increased after WWII and its high level was sustained during the whole period of state socialism, in line with the suggestion of Sik (1988). Hence, evidence suggests self-build was boosted rather than restricted with the introduction of state socialism. Further, no substantial positive effect of the disintegration of state socialism on self-construction is reflected in the data. The increase in the share of self-build between 1978 and 1996 despite the relative stability of output occurred due to the virtual disappearance of public housing provision in the period.

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The most significant lasting change can be observed after the regime change in 1989 when the number of self-built units declined steeply to a marginal level by the end of the 2000s. One of the likely causes is the halt in urbanisation, causing decreasing demand for urban housing. But pro-market changes after the fall of state socialism such as the commodification of land ending preferential land sales; the expansion of mortgage lending; and the new Building Act (1997) setting higher requirements for construction labour and virtually banning self-building also contributed to the decline of the practice. The weakening of family ties and increased geographic mobility of young adults (Murinkó, 2013; Lakatos, 2015) are also likely to contribute to the decline of the practice requiring a close relationship among family members. This trend is again the opposite of an increase envisaged and argued to be the consequence of a protracted transformation into a fully-fledged market-based housing system in CEE by several authors (Tsenkova, 2009; Stephens, Lux and Sunega, 2015).
 

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Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Figure 3 Housing construction and self-build in Hungary between 1921 and 2017 (Nr. of units).
Source: own calculations based on yearbooks of housing construction (see Kováts (2022) for details).
 

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Data from time use surveys suggest some part of labour formerly provided in housing construction shifted to renovation or reconstruction as the share of people carrying out these activities did not decrease to the extent the number of self-built units did, especially after the millennium (see Table 1). Farkas and Székely’s (2001, pp. 10–11) data also demonstrate the share of people providing labour support in new housing construction dropped more significantly (by 70%) than support in housing renovation (25%).

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A number of amendments to the Building Act adopted since 2012 relaxed regulations regarding the use of family labour in construction works (CLVII Act, 2012; 244 Govt. Decree, 2019). However, the range of activities allowed to be performed by non-professionals was limited until 2019, therefore its effect on self-build is likely to be exerted in the future, however, it is not considered to substantially affect the practice in the period covered by the current analysis (Kovácsné Csala, 2019a, 2019b).
 

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Table 1. The share of the population aged 15 to 74 spending time on maintenance, renovation or construction of a premise or a building.
1986/1987
3.3
1999/2000
1.9
2009/2010
1.9
Source: KSH (2012, p. 108)
 
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