7. Conclusion

Globally, parental support is argued to be on the increase in line with the trend of re-familialisation emerging as a reaction to the increasing re-commodification of housing taking place since the 1970s (Flynn and Schwartz, 2017; Ronald and Lennartz, 2018). However, in CEE, there is a tendency to analyse family support from an alternative standpoint as the consequence of the collapse of the state-socialist housing system and the protracted transition into a market-based one, hindering commodification (Norris and Domański, 2009; Stephens, Lux and Sunega, 2015). In this sense, there are two contradictory concepts of the relationship between commodification and family support globally and in CEE: the first approach assumes there is a positive relationship between the two phenomena while the latter suggests it is an inverse one. However, since CEE housing research dedicated little attention to the development of the structure of parental support over time, the latter assumption is underpinned by meagre empirical evidence.

The book sought to empirically assess the above issues through the case study of Hungary. Since WWII, a number of surveys have been conducted in the country that measured the frequency of different types of parental support, while after the regime change two representative housing surveys recorded data about the subject. The research aimed at gathering and analysing these data, that, to date were not reviewed together in the above theoretical framework. Based on the Hungarian literature discussing the development of the housing system during and after the period of state socialism, periods of commodification and transition were identified and the development of parental support throughout these periods was examined.

Besides macro determinants of parental support, there is also ambiguity in research about the microdeterminants of the practice. In mostly North-Western European foreign case studies, research focused on the determinants of intergenerational co-residence and financial support. There, intergenerational co-residence was influenced by low parental income and the conditions of co-residence such as dwelling size or home ownership. Financial support was found to be mostly influenced by parental socio-economic status and tenure socialisation of parents (parental tenure), and to a lesser extent by children’s merit (university degree or marriage) and need (divorced status, low income, etc.).

Since Hungarian empirical evidence about the microdeterminants of these types of support was scant, only the impact of the characteristics of the parental households was examined. In addition, microdeterminants of labour support in housing access, insignificant in high-income countries but assumed to be an important form of parental support in Hungary until recently, were also explored. Separate collection of data about the provision of financial support and the provision of a dwelling enabled the separate analysis of the two types of transfers. Altogether, microdeterminants of the provision of four types of support were scrutinised in the book: labour support in construction and renovation, temporary accommodation, finance and the provision of a dwelling.

Based on findings of earlier research, housing-related assistance provided to young adults by their parents has been on the increase at least since the 1970s. In the period between 2003 and 2015 analysed in detail in the current study through HCSO surveys that recorded data on parent households providing support to their adult children living independently, found that more parents were able to aid their children after 2003 than before. While the share of parent households providing support slightly increased, real changes occurred regarding non-supporting parents. The share of parent households not providing support due to the lack of their children’s need dynamically increased, while the share of non-supporters due to the lack of means dropped. Non-supporters due to the lack of need constitute a heterogenous group including parents with adult children not affording to complement parental support with own resources to access home ownership and therefore staying in private rental housing, but also those with children affording to access housing without any parental support. The strengthening impact of parental class on the lack of support due to the lack of need suggests the share of higher-class parents not aiding their children because they could afford to access housing without parental support grew. This indicates that, after the economic shock of the regime change characterising the 1990s, the support capacity of parents improved in general since the millennium.

The minor increase in the share of parent households aiding their adult children living independently after the millennium recorded by HCSO data was accompanied by a substantial rise in the share of young adults living with their parents (only partly recorded by the HCSO surveys). The covariance of periods of housing system formation and trends in parental support showed that support was more frequently provided in periods of housing market uptake while it decreased during the GFC and immediately following the regime change. In the early 2000s characterised by the expansion of mortgage lending, housing price appreciation and a housing construction boom, parental support was higher than in periods of stagnation. It is surprising that young adults living with their parents, considered as an “emergency” parental support in the literature, also increased in the period of the housing boom. The countercyclical development of the share of private tenants suggests that parental support has been more frequently provided at the time of intense housing commodification and less in the post-crisis period characterised by the limited availability of mortgage finance when young adults lived in rental housing in a higher proportion.

Acknowledging the limits of the analysis based on the reporting of parental support in retrospect covering only trends over a few decades, research results suggest that, in line with findings of the international literature and the Hungarian financialisation approach (Flynn and Schwartz, 2017; Ronald and Lennartz, 2018; Gagyi et al., 2019), but contrary to the transition approach dominating CEE housing studies (Norris and Domański, 2009; Stephens, Lux and Sunega, 2015; Csizmady, Hegedüs and Vonnák, 2019), the Hungarian case study suggests that housing commodification contributes to the spread and not the retreat of parental help even in the CEE context.

Another consequence of commodification is the restructuring of support. Labour support in general, but especially support in construction, that is not dependent on parental wealth decreased due to the restrictions on self-build, the harder access to building land and the loosening of rural communities. Parallel to this change, financial aid and the provision of dwellings, depending more on parental wealth, became more widespread.

Adverse effects of commodification vary spatially as urbanites are more impacted by housing price appreciation than the population of rural areas where appreciation tends to be low. The socio-spatial division of different support types testifies to the fact that in Budapest, hit hardest by housing price appreciation, parents apply strategies to minimise its disadvantages. In the capital city, regardless of class, the provision of a dwelling to children is far more widespread than in other parts of the country. This indicates that parents strive to maximise parental support by obtaining dwellings for their children in advance before housing appreciation would inflate the value of the support they can provide. Lower-class parents from Budapest who do not manage to provide a dwelling, support their children through the provision of temporary accommodation in a larger share. Outside Budapest, financial support, and among lower-class parents, labour support are more common. The relative unpopularity of the provision of living space there, either in the form of a dwelling or co-residence, can be explained by the fact that space, that is land, is less scarce in these areas as they are less threatened by real estate price appreciation generated by financialisation.

Empirical findings of the book have a number of theoretical implications in social sciences that are worth highlighting. In his seminal work Thomas Piketty (2014, pp. 337–467) explored how inheritance maintains and increases inequality. Ryan-Collins, Lloyd and Macfarlane (2017) demonstrated that much of inequality in wealth is created through the spatially very different appreciation of housing. Based on evidence from core countries Flynn and Schwartz (2017), and based on evidence from CEE the current study, found that even parental support during their lifetime plays a significant role in fostering inequality.

The financialisation of housing fuelling housing price appreciation not only increases wealth inequality between generations, but also between young adults with different family backgrounds. Urban and wealthier parents, besides passing on social and cultural capital, possess knowledge and the economic capital enabling them to aid their children ahead of housing market upswings, whereas lower-class parents living in the provinces have neither the information nor the capital to make advantageous strategic housing-related intergenerational transfers. The former can to a higher extent prevent the inflation of their support to their children by purchasing a dwelling or providing financial support to their children at the right time, or at best outright take advantage of the appreciation of housing and increase their children’s wealth. However, the latter enhance their children’s disadvantaged position by not being able to provide substantial support, only labour that is of much lower utility today. Similarly to Csizmady, Kőszeghy and Győri’s (2019) recent findings about the high share of home owners never living in rental housing among the socially most integrated groups in Hungary, the current study suggests there is a strong relationship between class and housing career today.

However, although the children of better-off parents are seemingly in a better situation in a housing system where one’s housing conditions and wealth are determined by parental status, higher parental control over their housing and life decisions significantly counterbalances these benefits. In this sense, in a familialised housing system, the phenomenon of “emerging adulthood” (Arnett, 2000) or “post-adolescence” (Vaskovics, 2000) is omnipresent. This is probably the reason why a high proportion of young adults with high-status parents who could count on parental support, secure housing without the help of their parents.

As the significant inequality-driving character of not only the commodification of housing but also family support is becoming increasingly obvious, arguments for the de-familialising de-commodification of housing, extensively advocated by housing researchers in the past decades, are stronger. Flynn and Schwartz (2017, p. 498) view the current populist trend unfolding in politics globally as already the beginning of a Polanyian countermovement aiming at curbing commodification. They argue that throughout history, countermovements often started first by the emergence of nationalist political movements promising to only shelter the “ethnonational core” population from the market. If they are right, the question is if the adverse effects of an increasingly global market can still be offset by nationalist policies aiming to strengthen the sovereignty of nation states today when competition among countries for the attraction of highly mobile capital through deregulation and lower redistribution is particularly intense.

Answering that question reaches beyond the focus of this book. Nevertheless, what the evidence presented in this work suggests is that the liberalisation of mortgage lending, besides exposing the population to the more significant risk of indebtedness, increases the burdens of families and young adults. However, even the housing policy of the current Hungarian regime, a renowned example of right-wing populism, that relatively strictly regulates mortgage lending and provides a large variety of preferential non-market loans to families with children, is also unlikely to effectively mitigate housing inequalities. The fact that the reliance on family increased during the millennium housing market boom, when mortgages were widely accessible suggests that the current subsidies and preferential fixed-rate mortgages provided to the Hungarian middle class, and especially the higher-middle class, to access mortgaged home ownership is likely to feed rather than mitigate housing inequalities. The higher extent of housing price appreciation due to the expansion of mortgage lending requires higher support from the family to young adults aspiring to become homeowners and probably more significant efforts from the children themselves. This is likely to further increase differences between those able and unable to secure such family support.

While currently the promotion of home ownership and the reluctance to favour other tenures seem to constitute the cornerstone of the housing policy of not only the Hungarian Orbán regime, but most European countries, it is not excluded that the benefits of subsidising other de-commodified tenures over or besides home ownership will be recognised and housing policy’s aim will shift towards more significant de-commodification. Findings of the current book suggest such a change would significantly mitigate the reliance on parental support in housing access and consequently the pace of the rise of inequalities.