IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/esconf/343871.html

Now-or-Never Incentives: How Hungary's Baby-Expecting Loan and Family Housing Allowance (CSOK) Shaped Borrowing and Fertility

Author

Listed:
  • Kovácsné Bosnyák, Eszter

Abstract

The study examines the effects of Hungary's family policy credit programmes-particularly the Baby-expecting loan and the family housing allowance (CSOK) scheme-from a behavioral economics perspective. While these programmes were designed to promote childbearing and improve access to housing, birth trends suggest that their impact has been temporary rather than lasting. The analysis draws on time series from 2010 to 2024, statistics from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) and the National Bank of Hungary (MNB), as well as survey evidence. The research focuses specifically on decision-making biases: present bias, "now-or-never" framing, and over-optimism. Our findings indicate that although the programmes did contribute to a short-term increase in births, they primarily generated brought-forward births rather than a durable demographic turnaround. In addition, the side effects of the subsidies distorted the housing market: they contributed to rapid house-price growth, reinforced social inequalities, and further widened regional disparities. The research is novel in that it assesses the effects of family policy loans not only within an economic framework but also through a behavioral lens. It shows that well-targeted subsidies, on their own, are insufficient to achieve sustainable demographic growth if they overlook households' psychological decision-making biases and the long-term social consequences.

Suggested Citation

  • Kovácsné Bosnyák, Eszter, 2025. "Now-or-Never Incentives: How Hungary's Baby-Expecting Loan and Family Housing Allowance (CSOK) Shaped Borrowing and Fertility," EconStor Conference Papers 343871, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:esconf:343871
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/343871/1/ABS36-Corrected-Final.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Drazen Prelec & George Loewenstein, 1998. "The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(1), pages 4-28.
    2. Hsu-Chi Weng & Cecilia Hermansson, 2026. "Behavioral Intention, Personality and Consumer Credit Use," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-22, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Johannes Abeler & Felix Marklein, 2017. "Fungibility, Labels, and Consumption," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 99-127.
    2. Shinhye Kim & Alberto Sa Vinhas & U.N. Umesh, 2022. "Prepayment and future cross-buying: an exploratory analysis," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 415-439, September.
    3. Yizhao Jiang, 2022. "How Money Enters Before It Leaves: Experimental Remuneration and the Mobile-Payment Effect," Papers 2210.14631, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2026.
    4. Mette, Frederike Monika Budiner & de Matos, Celso Augusto & Rohden, Simoni F. & Ponchio, Mateus Canniatti, 2019. "Explanatory mechanisms of the decision to buy on credit: The role of materialism, impulsivity and financial knowledge," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 15-21.
    5. White, Tiffany Barnett & Novak, Thomas P. & Hoffman, Donna L., 2014. "No Strings Attached: When Giving It Away Versus Making Them Pay Reduces Consumer Information Disclosure," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 184-195.
    6. Jae‐Do Song, 2023. "Excessive banking preference in emissions trading," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(1), pages 448-458, January.
    7. Goswami, Indranil & Urminsky, Oleg, 2021. "Don’t fear the meter: How longer time limits bias managers to prefer hiring with flat fee compensation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 42-58.
    8. Elias L. Khalil, 2024. "Mental accounting, heuristics, and the second‐best: Solving the calculator‐jacket puzzle," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 45(4), pages 2415-2427, June.
    9. He, Haonan & Wang, Shanyong, 2019. "Cost-benefit associations in consumer inventory problem with uncertain benefit," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 271-284.
    10. Robin Maximilian Stetzka & Stefan Winter, 2023. "How rational is gambling?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(4), pages 1432-1488, September.
    11. Erica Field, 2002. "Educational Debt Burden and Career Choice: Evidence from a Financial Aid Experiment at NYU Law School," Working Papers 848, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    12. Minnema, Alec & Bijmolt, Tammo H.A. & Gensler, Sonja & Wiesel, Thorsten, 2016. "To Keep or Not to Keep: Effects of Online Customer Reviews on Product Returns," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 253-267.
    13. Ma, Qingguo & He, Yijin & Tan, Yulin & Cheng, Lu & Wang, Manlin, 2024. "Unveiling the Impact of Payment Methods on Consumer Behavior: Insights and Future Directions," OSF Preprints 3fphk, Center for Open Science.
    14. Ashby, Rhys & Sharifi, Shahin & Yao, Jun & Ang, Lawrence, 2025. "The influence of the buy-now-pay-later payment mode on consumer spending decisions," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 101(1), pages 103-119.
    15. Lola Hernandez & Nicole Jonker & Anneke Kosse, 2017. "Cash versus Debit Card: The Role of Budget Control," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 91-112, March.
    16. Malmendier, Ulrike M. & Della Vigna, Stefano, 2002. "Overestimating Self-Control: Evidence from the Health Club Industry," Research Papers 1880, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    17. Sutan, Angela & Grolleau, Gilles & Mateu, Guillermo & Vranceanu, Radu, 2018. "“Facta non verba”: An experiment on pledging and giving," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 1-15.
    18. Gathergood, John & Olafsson, Arna, 2020. "The Co-holding Puzzle: New Evidence from Transaction-Level Data," CEPR Discussion Papers 14799, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    19. Sven Heidenreich & Katrin Talke, 2012. "Tarifwahl-Anomalien bei optionalen Mobilfunktarifen — Eine Analyse der Ursachen von Flatrate-Präferenz und Flatrate-Bias," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 64(3), pages 280-307, May.
    20. repec:osf:osfxxx:3fphk_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Sanjit Dhami & Narges Hajimoladarvish, 2020. "Mental Accounting, Loss Aversion, and Tax Evasion: Theory and Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 8606, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:esconf:343871. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.