Mass homeownership policy and economic well-being of the elderly: empirical evidence from the Polish household survey

Abstract

PurposeThe authors’ empirical investigation attempts to identify the nexus between the economic well-being of Polish elderly households and their housing situation, which can be related to the impact of the mass privatization policy implemented in Poland in the early 1990s. The generation who benefited from the process at that time currently includes great majority of people at retirement age who are homeowners.Design/methodology/approachIn the study, the authors employ micro data from the Polish Social Diagnosis household survey and analyze them in a multinomial logistic regression framework. They explore the nexus between both subjective and objective measures of income and housing circumstances.FindingsThe results imply that housing arrangements do not significantly differentiate Polish households in terms of their economic well-being when controlling for other sociodemographic factors. This may result from two independent, but possibly overlapping, reasons. The first is that housing circumstances are quite evenly distributed across elderly population as compared to income. This may be a direct effect of the “(socialist) state legacy,” as in the socialist era there was a strong focus on diminishing income and wealth inequalities in society. The second explanation is that better housing circumstances are not a sufficient means to improve the welfare of the elderly.Originality/valueThe study’s analysis is associated with little investigated area of the welfare effects of homeownership in the old age at the individual level. It explores this issue on the example of Poland, which is a typical representative of the group of post-socialist countries that share a common feature of “state legacy welfare” that is characterized by extensive mortgage-free homeownership.