Abstract
Among the welfare pillars, family has been important relative to state or market in housing provision in Cyprus. In this respect Cyprus is similar to other southern European/Mediterranean countries, which are generally considered to have welfare systems characterised by the importance of family. Influence of family, described here by the term ‘familiocracy’, is reflected in what seems to be an extremely high rate of housing gifts in Cyprus, where parents provide their children with a gift of a dwelling when they get married. That this is a form of de-commodification in housing, is reflected in the fact that income and homeownership are not significantly related. Income and receipt of house as gift are also not significantly related. Gift-receiving households do have different consumption patterns from non-gift-receiving households however, but this is also shown to be related to familiocracy.
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Notes
This concept is explained in the next section below.
In his 2003 paper Esping-Andersen calls “neo-liberals” those who “advocate the primacy of markets (and usually ignore the family).”
For an interesting critique of this debate, see Schubert et al. (2009).
This does not imply that the housing systems in all the SE/M countries are the same. Vakili-Zad and Hoekstra (2011) suggest ways in which Malta, for example, is different. The SE/M countries do, however, share high significance of family and high dwelling vacancy rates. For Malta, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece see Vakili-Zad and Hoekstra (2011); for Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Italy, see Tsenkova (2008).
Table 2—as does this paper in general—excludes the Eastern European (post-communist) countries because including them would divert the focus from SE/M.
No other papers in English, on housing in Cyprus, of relevance in the present context, could be found.
In some of these respects, Cyprus is similar to the other Mediterranean island member of the EU, Malta.
This low de-commodification is in Esping-Andersen’s sense, referring particularly to the labour market. If housing was the focus, then SE/M would be characterised by high de-commodification.
On the importance of religion in Cyprus, south and north, Greek Orthodox and Islam, see Yeşilada et al. (2009).
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Minas, C., Mavrikiou, P.M. & Jacobson, D. Homeownership, family and the gift effect: the case of Cyprus. J Hous and the Built Environ 28, 1–15 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-012-9281-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-012-9281-x