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Commodification and Social Reproduction:Theory and Mixed-Method Evidence on the Effect of Privatization on Childbearing
Scheiring, Gábor Caraher, Raymond Fodor, Eva Esping-Andersen, Gosta King, Lawrence
Scheiring, Gábor
Caraher, Raymond
Fodor, Eva
Esping-Andersen, Gosta
King, Lawrence
Title / Series / Name
Archives Europeennes de Sociologie
Publication Volume
Publication Issue
Pages
Editors
Keywords
Care
Childbearing
Commodification
Eastern Europe
Privatization
Social Reproduction
Sociology and Political Science
Childbearing
Commodification
Eastern Europe
Privatization
Social Reproduction
Sociology and Political Science
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Fodor-Eva_2026.pdf
Adobe PDF, 956.93 KB
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/28982
Abstract
Social reproduction scholars have made headway in integrating the analysis of capitalism, class, gender, and care. We offer two contributions to this literature. First, we provide a novel framework with insights into companies as sites of decommodification, shaping childcare cost distribution and affecting childbearing rates. Second, we extend social reproduction research geographically to the oft-overlooked region of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe is home to 15 of the world’s 20 fastest-declining populations, with low fertility as a prime cause. We argue that privatization catalyzes commodification, raising work intensity and financial-temporal uncertainty and eroding collective resources for social reproduction, thereby impacting childbearing. We explore this mechanism quantitatively by employing four distinct definitions of privatization across two datasets: one covering 52 Hungarian towns (1989–2006) and another spanning 29 postsocialist countries (1989–2012). We shed light on the details of the mechanism through a qualitative analysis of 82 life-history interviews in four Hungarian towns, surveying the lived experience of privatization.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2026-02-09
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1017/S0003975625100246