Housing independence pathways in Europe: the influence of parents’ socio-economic background in times of economic stress

ABSTRACT

The housing independence of young adults has become more complex and uncertain in Europe over the last decades. Previous research suggests that patterns of independent living and housing demand have become more differentiated and socially stratified, especially since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). The decline in homeownership and the availability of social housing has been accompanied by an increase in private renting and shared accommodation. Moreover, young adults have increasingly relied on their parents for both material and non material support to overcome constraints and achieve independent living. This paper examines how the relationship between parental background and both young adults' leaving home, and their first housing tenure changed during the GFC in different European housing contexts. Using longitudinal data from EU-SILC (2008–2018), the results show that parental background still plays a significant stratifying role in the housing independence of young adults from the pre – to the post-crisis period, particularly in terms of first tenure status rather than home-leaving. The influence of the housing context on both housing market opportunities and the role of parents in young adults' independence shapes the shift from co-residence with parents to living independently in either homeownership or rented accommodation.

KEYWORDS:

• Leaving parental home
• Homeownership
• Parental background
• Housing system
• Europe

Acknowledgements

EU-SILC data access via the University of Milan (RPP 272/2021).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Except for France (9-years panel), Norway (8-years panel) and Luxembourg (pure panel with no replacement).

2 Longitudinal data for Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Ireland, Serbia, and Slovakia are not available for all rotational panels considered. Cyprus, Estonia, Iceland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Romania were excluded because of the small number of moves between time $t$ and $t+1$.

3 Young students at $t$ were excluded because of the small number of cases.

4 The sample was further restricted to only those who were fully interviewed in the second year of two-year period (N = 7441).

5 Free accommodation category was excluded.

6 Overall, internal consistency of the index is confirmed through an adequate Cronbach’s alpha of 0.78 as well as within each cluster of countries.

Additional information

Funding

This publication has benefited from a research stay at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and was financially supported by GESIS research grant EL-2022-195.