Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/229503 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 8685
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We study the effect of exposure to communism (EC), a political-economic regime based on collectivist planning, on preferences for family supports, which we refer to as ‘informal family insurance’. We exploit both cross-country and cohort variation in EC in a large sample of Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC). Against the backdrop that ‘communism gives rise to the abolition of the family’, we find robust evidence that EC strengthens the preference for family insurance which coexists with a stronger preference for social insurance. We find a six per cent increase in preferences for care to older parents and a four per cent increase in preferences for support to pre-school children and financial support to adult children. These effects are explained by the erosion of both generalized trust and the lower confidence in public institutions, suggesting that (raising uncertainty and adversity during) communism increased the demand for all types of available insurance.
Subjects: 
informal family insurance
family networks
social insurance
interpersonal trust
confidence in institutions
Soviet communism
Eastern Europe
JEL: 
Z10
P30
Document Type: 
Working Paper
Appears in Collections:

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.