Trash contracts? The impact of temporary employment on leaving the parental home in Poland

Abstract

Poland stands out in international comparisons as a country where leaving parental home is remarkably delayed. There are many economic and institutional factors which contribute to postponing residential independence among youth, such as housing shortages, the limited share of rental housing or limited social assistance for young people. However, in the public debate there is little discussion about re-designing social policy support for youth or improvement of situation on the housing market. What attracts attention instead is the role of flexibilisation of contractual arrangements on the Polish labour market. In the media discourse, fixed-term contracts have been labelled as “trash contracts” and all the problems that young people in Poland face when making transition to adulthood, have been attributed to the spread this specific employment form. This article aims to find out whether fixed-term contracts indeed hinder residential independence of youth. Models of leaving parental home are estimated based on panel data from EU-SILC. The results show no significant negative impact of temporary employment on probability of establishing one’s own household among youth. What matters is whether young people have jobs, whereas the type of contracts that they receive from employers seems to be of little importance.