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

Eszter Kovácsné Bosnyák

EconStor Conference Papers from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

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.

Keywords: behavioral economic; fertility; housing market; baby-expecting loan and family housing allowance (CSOK); present bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-uep
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/343871/1/ABS36-Corrected-Final.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esconf:343871

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EconStor Conference Papers from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().