Asset-based welfare: Is housing equity release a viable option for pensioners in Slovenia

Abstract

The transformations in the welfare state regimes that have occurred globally, over the last three decades or so, have seriously affected the capacity of states to sustain the previous levels of social care and protection. These changes, already being manifested, inter alia, in trends in declining earnings of pensioners have inspired some researchers in this field to explore alternative ways of mitigating their impact on the well-being of the elderly during the retirement period. One of the theories that has been advanced to this effect is the so-called asset-based welfare concept which suggests that the wealth accumulated by people in the form of housing assets presents a financial reservoir that may serve as a source of income for pensioners in time of need. To address these issues, a variety of mechanisms have been developed and presented as ‘equity release products’ that may be used by senior homeowners to improve their living situation. This article contributes to the debate from the perspective of a country in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), a region that has been rarely included in the scholarly discourse on the topic. While there might have been some level of success in the implementation of these instruments in some countries, the survey findings presented and discussed in this article show that Slovenian elderly homeowners strongly reject all the equity release products that were presented to them as potential options for alleviating financial hardship in old age. These findings lead us to the conclusion that it is highly unlikely that Slovenian elderly homeowners would ever accept and exploit, at any meaningful level of uptake, the investigated equity release mechanisms.

Anticipating a Reverse Mortgage Adoption in Croatia

“…In the nutshell, there is a lack of financial consumers' interest for introducing the RM loans in Croatia for the time being. Obtained results are in line with those for other CEE countries, likewise Slovenia (Sendi et al, 2019), Slovak Republic (Husáková et al, 2018) or Poland (Zbrojewski, 2013).…”

“…The research of 930 Slovenian financial consumers that were aged 50 years and over by Sendi et al (2019) reveals strong rejection of the RM product, as only 1.6% of the total number of respondents declared that they would accept a loan model of RM. The logistic regression results show that the younger respondents and those with higher level of education were more inclined towards the equity release.…”

Relationship between housing finance institutional contexts and financial contexts to housing ownership by low-income earners in Bauchi LGA, Nigeria

“…The Nigerian market is especially difficult given the macroeconomic volatility that makes policies to become unstable and therefore unreliable in the long term. Sendi et al (2019) also conducted a study on the role of mortgage in housing finance in Slovenia. The study whose main aim was to explore the role mortgage lending play in housing finance in Slovenia revealed that the National Housing Fund (NHF), which is a Low-income earners in Bauchi LGA, Nigeria public agency, dominate majority of the Slovenian housing finance market, because of weak primary and non-existing secondary mortgage market.…”

Housing Choices of Older People: Staying or Moving in the Case of High Care Needs

“…The post-communist countries of central and eastern Europe (among them Slovenia) are characterised by very high levels of homeownership [17]. As stated by Sendi et al [76], homeownership can be an important financial asset under the condition of increasing care costs and withdrawal of the welfare state. The results of this study showed that all groups except one (the first group) would have the use of this financial asset while enacting their potential option of moving.…”