An Analysis of Housing Policy Measures Aimed at Supporting Labour Flexibility in the Czech Republic

The potential housing-policy instruments that could be used to encourage Czech citizens to move for job opportunities - results of the national questionnaire survey "CVVM 2006"

The conclusions from the focus groups were tested against the results of the national questionnaire survey "CVVM 2006". In this survey, respondents had the opportunity to recommend specific housing policy instruments that could help increase labour mobility among economically active people. The incentives were ranked by the estimated costs they would put on the state budget, and respondents were informed about the financial expense of individual incentives in the questions. The table below shows the percentage of respondents who would definitely or somewhat recommend the individual housing policy instruments listed therein. The questionnaire survey of a sample of the Czech population also confirmed that people tend to recommend the "cheaper" forms of public support, especially that of facilitating more information about housing in the location of a potential new job through the labour offices.

Public support in the area of housing policy can generally be divided into so-called supply-side subsidies (subsidies for the construction and allocation of municipal flats for a target population) and demand-side subsidies (providing information, allowances, and favourable loans to a target population). It was found that supply-side subsidies are the form least recommended by people who are not willing to move for work and even by people who are willing to move for work. Economically inactive respondents, particularly pensioners, who obviously are not the target of this support, tend to recommend supply-side subsidies much more than demand-side subsidies (with the exception of the incentive of low-interest loans for acquiring ownership housing). In the context of these findings, the effect of costly supply-side subsidies aimed at encouraging Czech household mobility for employment reasons is at the very least questionable in the current Czech social environment (i.e. under the given socio-political and cultural circumstances); this form of support could have a some, albeit hard to estimate, effect among people with low education and households with a poor living standard, as they are the ones who recommended it most. The most frequent combination of recommended housing policy instruments was the recommendation to provide more information to the unemployed about housing in the location of a potential new job and providing low-interest loans for the acquisition of housing.

Every kind of public support is recommended statistically significantly more by those people who would be inclined to move to obtain work if they were unemployed, even if there was no explicit form of public support to do so. This finding was already confirmed in the above finding that these policy instruments would most likely help the part of the Czech population that is already the most mobile and make it easier for them to move for work (in some cases these instruments would evidently provide that part of the population that has the characteristics of greater mobility but is hesitant to move with greater motivation for moving). There is nothing wrong with support that is provided not with the purpose of immediately improving the "public good", however that may be defined in the goals of current policy, but instead with the purpose of helping those who already contribute to the "public good" to live better. In the area of housing policy there is nothing wrong with support that is directed more at those people who are already more willing to move for work, because there are numerous different factors that affect a person's willingness to move, and most of them have little to do with housing policy (it could be said that none of the factors are connected with housing policy, as satisfaction with housing or tenure, both of which are significant factors in a person's willingness/unwillingness to move, are not a direct consequence of state housing policy). But the form and scope of public incentives certainly need to take this fact into account, as the effect on the less mobile part of the Czech population in the current circumstances remains weak, and it is likely just to make moving easier for the more mobile part of the population, which is inclined to move anyway, so these forms of support should be supplementary, with financial limits, and very well targeted.