Intergenerational financial transfers and indirect reciprocity: determinants of the reproduction of homeownership in the post-socialist Czech Republic

Using a representative survey of the Czech population, we demonstrate that intergenerational within-family financial (wealth) transfers represent the main mechanism in the reproduction of homeownership in Czech post-socialist society. The provision of a transfer or the lack of one largely determines the housing tenure of Czech young adults. Without transfers, the children of homeowners are significantly less likely to also become homeowners. We also show that the probability of an adult child receiving a transfer and the size of the transfer are closely linked (a) to the adult child’s within-family socialisation and (b) to the fact of whether the parents had also received a transfer from their parents in the past and how large that transfer was. These findings have important implications for how housing markets operate and for social inequalities. For example, if an established history of within-family transfers is a predictor of homeownership in future cohorts, this may mean that an important part of society will be systemically and predictably excluded from access to homeownership and a fixed axis of reproduced housing wealth inequality may form.