Housing stratification in Romania: mapping a decade of change
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Housing stratification in Romania: mapping a decade of change Adriana Mihaela Soaita1 · Caroline Dewilde2 Received: 21 September 2019 / Accepted: 4 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Given increasing economic affluence, improvement in housing conditions and population decline in the last three decades, Romanians should be more likely to experience better housing than ever before, particularly in terms of the availability and affordability of space. But substantial improvement alongside numerous people still suffering poor conditions begs the important question of who has benefited and who has been excluded. Engaging the theoretical framework of diverse economies and drawing on 2007 and 2018 EurostatSILC micro-data, we examine the realignment between housing and income stratification across a proposed housing typology that reflects historically enduring arrangements of housing provisions and economic hierarchies. We find that residents’ socioeconomic profiles differ significantly by type of housing (e.g. showing surprising economic prosperity in urban flats and extreme poverty in some rural houses), which positions our typology as an expression of housing stratification. Furthermore, multivariate analyses highlight the increasingly stronger relationship between income and housing consumption over the decade. Of concern, a large share of the population (the bottom 40% of the income distribution) has fallen further into housing disadvantage after controlling for overall improvements in housing conditions. Conversely, the relative distance between middle- and higherincome households has decreased; given the dominance of small dwellings in the housing stock, higher-income groups seem unable to transfer their financial gains into space in their main residence except a minority engaged in the self-provision of ‘villas’. These patterns of housing stratification indicate a move towards a 40%/60% ‘hour-glass’ society if housing continues to remain outside the political agenda. Keywords Diverse economies · House and flat · Housing inequality · Housing types · Housing stratification · Post-communism · Romania · Socioeconomic stratification
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1090 1-020-09788-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Adriana Mihaela Soaita [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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A. M. Soaita, C. Dewilde
1 Introduction Three decades have passed since the fall of communism, most Eastern Bloc’s countries being now full members of the European Union (EU). Their residents have experienced outstanding economic growth and obtained freedom of movement unimaginable before. For todays’ youth, communism is no longer an experience but a narrative. Overall, people and places have undergone tremendous transformations (Sykora and Bouzarovski 2012). While some scholars (Tuvikene 2016) claim that we can abandon the notion of
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