Kováts Bence: The Financialisation of Housing and Housing-related Family Support in Hungary
›
6. Trends and determinants of parental support after the regime change
›
6.3. Discussion

6.3. Discussion

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The analysis of the HCSO microdata shed light on various aspects of parental support, its change and the processes underlying it. Results of logistic regressions clearly showed the class-based polarisation of parent households able to support their children (but not necessarily actually supporting them) and those unable to support them: the provision of parental support and the lack of provision due to the lack of their children’s need have increasingly become the privilege of people in the highest class, living in Budapest or in home ownership.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Class-based polarisation of the ability to support one’s children contradicts assumptions of the transition approach envisaging the decrease of family support due to the advance of the commodification of housing. If parental support indeed had filled a gap left by the disappearing state-provision of housing and the slow build-up of market-provision, it would have, on the one hand, been characteristic of lower-class households, as children of higher-class parents have an easier access to expensive and scarce purely market-provided housing, which is inaccessible for the majority of the population. Or, on the other hand, class should have simply not played a significant role as during the transition, similarly to pre-capitalist times, wide strata of society should rely on the support of their family under conditions of scarcity regardless of the wealth of their parents.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The high influence of class on parents’ ability to provide support did not increase the share of parent households not able to support their children. Evidence shows that between 2003 and 2015 a huge rise in the share of parent households not providing support due to the lack of their child(ren)’s need and a more modest increase of supporting households occurred. The larger influence of variables denoting higher socio-economic status of parents on non-provision due to the lack of need indicates that after the millennium a higher share of young adults with higher-class home-owning parents did not obtain support from their parents because they afforded to access housing without it. This was likely to have been enabled by this group’s easier access to mortgages or their larger wealth at young age. The decrease in the share of parent households not able to provide support suggests that as time passed since the regime change, parents’ prospects of supporting their children improved.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

However, while the situation of parents may have improved, this was not accompanied by better prospects for young adults to obtain housing independently from them. A larger share of parent households provided support after 2003, especially at the time of the expansion of mortgage lending than before. Accelerating housing commodification taking place in the form of the expansion of mortgage lending not only positively impacted parental support in general, but also intergenerational co-residence that was, conversely, assumed by Csizmady, Hegedüs and Vonnák (2019, pp. 17–18) to have been negatively affected by the easier access to mortgage in the period. In turn, the decrease of parental support, stagnation of the share of young adults in intergenerational co-residence and the rise of the share of people living in PRH in the post-crisis years suggest young adults rely less on the family and, in the virtual absence of non-profit housing in Hungary, more on the market in terms of housing access when mortgages are less accessible.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

As many researchers analysing NWE case studies found, the retrenchment of the welfare state, taking place since the 1970s as part of the process of re-commodification, has a generational bias: it concerns young adults more than older cohorts. Increasing reliance on parental support but better ability of parents to support their children can be explained by this phenomenon. Even though parents’ economic capacity to support their children improved, it is questionable to what extent their support can be used in a financialised housing market characterised by large-scale housing price appreciation and stricter regulations regarding self-building. The spread of living in allotment gardens (Czirfusz, Pósfai and Pósfai, 2018, p. 68); in low-quality private rental housing (Ámon and Balogi, 2018; Balogi and Kőszeghy, 2019); or together with one’s parents, suggest that a significant part of people “not needing” parental support from the parents’ perspective fall into this category because they could not afford to cover the costs of home ownership even with parental aid.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Those parents who can support their adult children increasingly rely on the provision of assistance that can be best utilised in a market-based housing system: finance and dwellings. Still, differences persist among groups in the incidence of providing certain types of support. The provision of a dwelling and temporary accommodation are characteristic of parents from Budapest, however, temporary accommodation is more likely among lower-class Budapestians. At the same time, in the provinces people provide finance to their children with a higher likelihood and representatives of provincial lower classes labour (see Table 5).
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Table 5. Incidence of the provision of different types of support by class and place of residence.
High class
Low class
Budapest
Dwelling
Dwelling
Temp. Accommodation
Provinces
Finance
Finance
Labour
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Reliance of rural lower-class parental households on types of support such as labour contribute to the enhancement of housing inequalities. In contrast with the provision of co-residence, a dwelling and finance which can be used strategically to improve or at least sustain a family’s position on the housing market if provided at the right time in the right location, the provision of labour lacks such advantages, furthermore, its use is more limited due to stricter building regulations.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The types of support provided in the countryside and in Budapest require a different extent of involvement of young adults in securing housing. In the case of the provision of a dwelling or temporary accommodation, recipients need to pursue very little effort which, however, also entails that parental control over their way of life is stronger. Conversely, support strategies of provincial households are marked by the more significant involvement of recipients in providing for their own housing and less parental control. Though finding the causes behind these patterns would exceed the limits of the book, it is certainly an interesting issue to be explored in the future.
 
chevron_left
chevron_right
Tartalomjegyzék navigate_next
Keresés a kiadványban navigate_next
A kereséshez, kérjük, lépj be!
Könyvjelzőim navigate_next
A könyvjelzők használatához
be kell jelentkezned.
Jegyzeteim navigate_next
Jegyzetek létrehozásához
be kell jelentkezned.
    Kiemeléseim navigate_next
    Mutasd a szövegben:
    Szűrés:
    Kiemelések létrehozásához
    MeRSZ+ előfizetés szükséges.
      Útmutató elindítása
      delete
      Kivonat
      fullscreenclose
      printsave