Coresidence in the Transition to Adulthood: The Case of the United States, Germany, Taiwan, and Mainland China

Abstract

This paper compares the prevalence and age-specific changes of coresidence patterns, by means of a classification of 12 coresidence types, for the age range from 16 to 30 in the United States (US), Germany (GE), Taiwan (TW), and mainland China (CN). Panel data were used in separate nested logistic regression models to estimate transitions in coresidence for individuals in each society in the transition to adulthood. On the first level, decisions to move from different types of family-of-origin-households were modeled, depending on intergenerational solidarity and parental resources. On the second level, target household types were modeled, depending on others’ trajectory events and their interaction with gender. The analysis used the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY97) from the United States, the German Family Panel (pairfam), the Taiwanese Youth Project (TYP), and the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). Age-specific coresidence patterns were pooled and transitions probabilities were estimated for a two-year period. The systematic comparative approach makes it possible to correct misinterpretations based on analyses from single societies. Our results demonstrated that differences in coresidence patterns within the patrilineal, collectivistic societies (CN and TW), and within the bilineal, individualistic societies (US and GE) were as important as the differences between these two groups of societies.

Acknowledgments

We thank anonymous reviewers and the editor whose comments and suggestions were helpful in improving our manuscript. We also thank Adele Wang and Gavin Cook for their English edition and helpful comments.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is a result of the research project “The Transition to Adulthood in a Comparative Perspective,” funded by the German Research Foundation [NA164/19-1] and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71461137001] as part of the international project “Life Course and Family Dynamics in a Comparative Perspectives.”

Notes on contributors

Bernhard Nauck

Bernhard Nauck ([email protected]) is research director and professor at the Department of Sociology of Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. His research interests include family sociology, demography, cross-cultural comparative analyses, migration and the life course. He served as a co-PI of the German Family Panel.

Qiang Ren

Qiang Ren ([email protected]) is associate professor at the Center for Social Research, Guanghua School of Management and associate director of the Institute of Social Science Survey, Peking University, China. His research interests include environment and health, population issues on fertility, mortality, labor force, and sex ratio at birth. He is currently working on the China Family Panel Studies as co-PI.