Children First? Intra-Household Inequality in Reconstituted Couple Households

An increasing number of children are growing up in reconstituted households, formed by a couple and a non-common child. Reconstituted households tend to be poorer, which is associated with worse behavioural and developmental outcomes. Additionally, there is evidence that non-common children receive less economic support from their parents upon leaving the parental home. Using age-specific deprivation data collected in the 2014 European Survey on Income and Living Conditions this article compares the allocation of resources in reconstituted and intact couple households. It shows that indeed, children in reconstituted households are more likely to be deprived compared to those in intact households. However, it finds no evidence that reconstituted households are less likely to prioritise children. The findings hold across welfare regimes. Women are more likely to go without compared with men, although differences are small.

Microsimulation of Household and Marital Transitions Leading to Childlessness Among Dutch Women Born Between 1971 and 2000

After reaching historically low levels among the women born in the early 1940s, childlessness has been increasing in most Western countries among women born in the 1950s and 1960s. This increase took place as patterns of transition to adulthood have become increasingly late, protracted, and complex. Yet, it is precisely those women who enter a first relationship late, spend more time as single, and experience union instability who more often remain childless. This suggests that levels of childlessness will continue to increase as younger cohorts complete their childbearing histories. In this study, we use microsimulation to project the household and union formation histories of cohorts of Dutch women born between 1971 and 2000. Results suggest that childlessness will actually decrease among cohorts born between 1971 and 1983 and then increase among those born between 1984 and 2000. The decrease occurs as pathways of household and union formation become later, more protracted, and more complex, but also as cohabiting women start to exhibit a higher propensity to become mothers. The increase, on the other hand, occurs as pathways become somewhat less protracted and complex, but also as the propensity of cohabiting women to become mothers returns to previous levels and as age at leaving the parental home strongly rises. Childlessness levels appear to increasingly depend on the childbearing decisions of cohabiting couples and on age at leaving the parental home.

THE COMPLEX MOBILITIES OF RURAL VERSUS URBAN YOUTH: MOBILITY INTO AND OUT OF THE PARENTAL HOME AND ONE’S COMMUNITY

This paper examines the options facing rural versus urban youth as they negotiate the complex mobilities of moving into adulthood. Specifically, it looks at the links between geographic mobility into and out of one’s home community, and mobility into and out of the parental home. Qualitative and numeric data from a longitudinal survey of 1200 youth provide insight into these transitions. Leaving the parental home is clearly a process rather than an event, and for many it is subjective and ambiguous. More rural youth than urban expected to leave both their parental home and their community, for education and work, and more in fact did leave, by age 19 and 22. This pattern reflects the often limited educational and work options in rural areas. Many youth returned to the parental home for varying lengths of time; again, more rural than urban youth followed this pattern. Urban youth more often have the option of staying close to home to pursue further education or find a job. The parental home serves as an important safety net for youth, especially those who may have been pushed to leave because of limited options nearby. Having the option of returning home gives youth an additional way of dealing with the challenges of their complex mobilities. The results confirm that the pressures on rural youth as they grapple with the mobilities options available to them are quite different than those on their urban counterparts. Thus, rural youth are more often faced with the complexities inherent in the links between social and spatial mobilities.

On the changes of the intention to leave the parental home during the COVID-19 pandemic: a comparison among five European countries

With the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Europe during the first months of 2020, most of the governments imposed restrictive measures to people mobility and physical distance (the lockdown), which severely impacted on the economic activities and performance of many countries. Thus, the health emergency turned rapidly into in an economic crisis. The COVID-19 crisis in Europe increased the uncertainty about the economic recovery and the end of health emergency. This situation is supposed to have conditioned individuals’ life course path with the effect of inducing people to postpone or to abandon many life plans.This paper aims to explore and describe whether the rise of health emergency due to the COVID-19 has delayed or vanished young people’s intention to leave the parental home, in order to establish their own household, during 2020 in five European countries: Italy, Germany, France, Spain and the UK. Using data from an international survey from the “Youth Project”, carried out by the Toniolo Institute of Advanced Studies, this paper implements generalized logistic models for ordinal dependent variables to investigate the factors associated with a possible revision of the choice of leaving the parental home for a representative sample of 6000 respondents aged 18 to 34, interviewed between March and April 2020. In particular, we compare the effect of the occupational condition and the perceived income and employment vulnerability on the chance of confirmation, postponement or abandonment of the pre-pandemic plan across the five selected European countries.Results show that Italy, Spain and the UK are the countries with the highest probability of a downward revision of the intentions of leaving the nest. Especially in these countries, having negative expectations about changes in the individual’s and family’s future income is associated with the choice of abandoning the purpose of leaving the parental home. However, the vulnerability of the category of temporary workers particularly arises in Southern European countries: young people with precarious jobs seem to be the most prone to negatively revise their intentions of leaving, even compared with those not working.

On the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the intention to leave the parental home

With the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic all over Europe during the first months of 2020, most of the European governments imposed restrictive measures to people mobility and physical distance (the lockdown), which severely impacted on the economic activities and performance of many countries. Thus, the health emergency turned rapidly into in an economic crisis. The Covid-19 crisis in Europe increased the uncertainty about the economic recovery and the end of the health emergency. This situation is supposed to have conditioned individuals’ life course path with the effect of inducing people to postpone or to abandon many life plans. This paper aims to explore whether the rise of health emergency due to the Covid-19 has delayed or vanished young people intention to leave the parental home during the 2020 in five European countries: Italy, Germany, France, Spain and UK. Using data from an international survey from the “Youth Project”, carried out by the Toniolo Institute of Advanced Studies, this paper implements ordered logistic models in order to investigate the determinants of a possible revision of the choice of leaving the parental home for a representative sample of 6,000 respondents aged 18 to 34, interviewed between March and April 2020. A special focus has been pointed on the Italian case, because of being the first European country to be strongly hit by the pandemic and because of the already economic vulnerable conditions of its young population.Results reports that Italy is the country with the highest rate of downward revisions of the intentions of leaving the nest. In particular, having negative expectations about changes in the individual’s and family’s future income is a key predictor of the choice of abandoning the purpose of leaving the parental home across Europe. However, the vulnerability of the category of temporary workers arises especially in Italy: young people with precarious jobs seems to be the most prone to negatively revise their intentions of leaving, even compared with those not working.

Associations of early adulthood life transitions with changes in fast food intake: a latent trajectory analysis

Background Early adulthood is a period of rapid personal development when individuals experience major life transitions (e.g. leaving the parental home, leaving education, beginning employment, cohabitation and parenthood). Changes in social and physical environments associated with these transitions may influence development of health-related behaviours. Consumption of fast food is one behaviour associated with poor diet and long-term health outcomes. In this study we assess how frequency of fast food consumption changes across early adulthood, and how major life transitions are associated with changes in fast food intake. Methods Data were collected across four waves of the Project EAT study, from mean age 14.9 (SD = 1.6) to mean age 31.1 (SD = 1.6) years. Participants reporting data at two or more waves were included (n = 2902). Participants reported past week frequency of eating food from a fast food restaurant and responded to questions on living arrangements, education and employment participation, and having children. To assess changes in fast food we developed a latent growth model incorporating an underlying trajectory of fast food intake, five life transitions, and time-invariant covariates. Results Mean fast food intake followed an underlying quadratic trajectory, increasing through adolescence to a maximum of 1.88 (SE 0.94) times/week and then decreasing again through early adulthood to 0.76 (SE 2.06) times/week at wave 4. Beginning full-time employment and becoming a parent both contributed to increases in fast food intake, each resulting in an average increase in weekly fast food intake of 0.16 (p < 0.01) times/week. Analysis of changes between pairs of waves revealed stronger associations for these two transitions between waves 1–2 (mean age 14.9–19.4 years) than seen in later waves. Leaving the parental home and beginning cohabitation were associated with decreases in fast food intake of − 0.17 (p = 0.004) and − 0.16 (p = 0.007) times/week respectively, while leaving full-time education was not associated with any change. Conclusions The transitions of beginning full-time employment and becoming a parent were associated with increases in fast food intake. Public health policy or interventions designed to reduce fast food intake in young adults may benefit from particular focus on populations experiencing these transitions, to ameliorate their impact.

Personality Development from Age 12 to 25 and its Links with Life Transitions

During adolescence and young adulthood, individuals show personality changes and experience various life transitions. Whereas personality might affect the timing of life transitions, life transitions might also induce personality maturation. We examined Big Five personality maturation from age 12 to 25 using a 9–year longitudinal study of Dutch youths from two cohorts ( n 1 = 683, MageT1 = 12.70; n 2 = 268, Mage T1 = 16.87). We linked personality maturation to the incidence and timing of four transitions: first romantic relationship, leaving the parental home, first job, and first cohabitation or marriage. Results indicated increases in mean levels, rank–order stabilities and profile stability of personality between age 12 and 25, which were largely replicated across the cohorts. Very few associations between personality and life transitions existed. However, higher mean–level Extraversion predicted leaving the parental home and starting the first romantic relationship, an earlier age when starting the first job, and an earlier average timing of transitions. Regarding social investment effects, we only found that those who never experienced a romantic relationship at age 25 decreased, while those who did increased in profile stability over time. These results suggest that personality consistently matures during adolescence and young adulthood and that higher Extraversion predict greater readiness for new steps towards adulthood.

Transition to Adulthood: Leaving the Parental Home in the Last Soviet and the First Post-Soviet Generation

The article presents a research on trajectories of leaving the parental home in the last Soviet and the first post-Soviet generations. It focuses on social transformation of the state during the transition from the Soviet to the post-Soviet and its impact on the life-course of these generations. In our study, we applied a dyadic approach and conducted semi-structured interviews with women of the last Soviet generation (born in 1962–1972) and their children (born in 1992–2002), who represent the first post-Soviet generation. Early changes in and the differentiation of the timetable of transition to adulthood of the last Soviet generation indicated a declining effect of ideologically supported social structures on the life-course of young adults and the growing power of individual decision to leave the parental home or stay within. The rapidly increasing globalization and a transformed economy shaped a new structural environment for the coming of age for the first post-Soviet generation; therefore, we can interpret the further pluralization, de-standardization, and differentiation of the timetable of the transition to adulthood of this generation as a reaction of young people to the emerging risks and insecurities.

Job uncertainty and leaving the parental home in Italy

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether and to what extent the labour market situation of young Italians affects their chances of exiting the parental home, differentiating between leaving parental home with or without a partner. The paper also considers whether contextual factors, such as the occurrence of the economic crisis and family-related characteristics, might play a moderating role. The main focus is to understand if new modes of becoming adult are emerging in a country in which leaving home occurs relatively late and where family ties are at the same time a source of protection and a source of reproduction of inequalities. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses longitudinal data from European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions for the period 2007–2014 and applies Event History Analysis techniques for discrete time data. The analyses estimate the hazard rate of leaving the parental home for a sample of Italian individuals in the age range of 16–40 who, at the beginning of the observation period, were living with their parents. Findings The empirical analyses highlight a negative association between exclusion from the labour market and housing autonomy, robust and consistent across gender and across types of transition. On the contrary, a situation of objective job insecurity does not emerge as being associated to lower chances of housing autonomy, compared to individuals with job stability. Moreover, the educational background of the family of origin does not show any mediating role on the relative disadvantage of unemployed and inactive individuals, while the relative disadvantage of inactive individuals tends to further worsen in the period after the economic crisis (2010–2014). Originality/value The paper contributes to the study of transitions to housing autonomy by differentiating between two modes: in couple or alone. Moreover, by introducing information on the educational background of parents and the time effect, the paper aims to combine different traditions of research coming from the sociology of work, family and inequalities.

Childlessness and union histories: evidence from Finnish population register data

From an evolutionary perspective, childlessness may be considered a failure, as it implies that there will be no direct transmission of one’s genetic material to later generations. It is also a pressing social issue, because in many contemporary advanced societies, levels of childlessness have increased, and particularly so among men. The absence of a partner is naturally a fundamental determinant of childlessness. Empirical evidence on how childlessness relates to individuals’ partnership histories is nevertheless limited. This issue was analysed with Finnish population register data, which allow the complete cohabitation and marriage histories of individuals from age 18 years to be observed. For women and men born between 1969 and 1971, logistic regression models were estimated for childlessness at age 40 by partnership histories in terms of various stages in the process of union formation and dissolution, and accounting for several socioeconomic variables. A strong link between union histories and childlessness was found, with short partnership spells raising the risk of not becoming a parent. Later age when leaving the parental home raised female childlessness, while a short first-union duration related more strongly to male childlessness. These findings may be considered as providing insights into how specific life-history strategies affect reproductive outcomes, and highlight the need to develop new approaches to understand this feature of social inequality.