Family and sociodemographic influences on patterns of leaving home in Postwar Britain

We identify child-level and parent-level characteristics associated with children’s patterns of leaving home. We use a multilevel discrete-time hazards model to examine the impact of family and demographic factors at both levels, and utilize the Alternating Conditional Expectation algorithm optimally to transform the dependent and independent variables. We find that measured variables at both the child and the parent level have important influences, as do period and cohort factors. However, unmeasured parent-level factors have an influence on the departure of children that is broadly similar in magnitude to measured factors.     

A portrait of the nest-leaving process in early adulthood

This paper provides an in-depth portrait of the nest-leaving process in early adulthood as it emerged in the 1980s. Event histories are used to describe transitions in and out of the parental home during the years from age 15 through age 23. We focus on the role of the “new” forms of living arrangements in the leaving-home process, namely nonfamily living and cohabitation. The results show that the transition to full residential independence is more gradual, with more intermediate steps, than previous studies suggested. Cohabitation is rare as a route out of the parental home, and both nonfamily living and cohabitation lead to much higher return rates than does marriage.     

Children's Economic Roles in the Maya Family Life Cycle: Cain,Caldwell, and Chayanov Revisited

This article examines the relationship between household demographic pressure and interage transfers for a group of Maya subsistence agriculturists in Yucatán, Mexico. The authors use data from a field study conducted in 1992–93 on individual time allocation, relative productivity by age and sex, and caloric costs of activities to estimate age schedules of average consumption and production. Using these, they investigate the net costs of children to their parents and find that children have a negative net asset value up to the time they leave home. The direction of net wealth flows in this group is downward, from older to younger, and in economic terms the internal rate of return to children is highly negative up to the time they leave home. Nonetheless, children play a critically important role in the family's economic life cycle. On average, girls offset 76 percent of their consumption costs before leaving home at age 19, and boys offset 82 percent before leaving home at 22. Without the contributions from children as a group, parents would have to double or triple their work effort during part of the family life cycle if they were to raise the same number of children. By the thirteenth year of the family life cycle, children as a group produce more than half of what they consume in every year, and after the twentieth year children produce more than 80 percent of what they as a group consume. The authors also find that the elderly in the sample, ages 50 to 65, produce more than they consume. Thus while children have a negative net asset value to parents, the timing of their children's economic contribution across the family life cycle plays a key role in underwriting the cost of large families.     

Postmarital Living Arrangements in Historically Patrilocal Settings: Integrating Household Fission and Migration Perspectives

This study integrates theory and research on household fission (or partition) and migration to better understand living arrangements following marriage, especially in historically patrilocal and primarily agricultural settings. Using panel data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study to analyze the sequential decision-making process that influences men’s living arrangements subsequent to first marriage, we demonstrate the importance of distinguishing among extended family living, temporary migration, and the establishment of an independent household. We find that community economic characteristics, such as access to markets or employment, as well as household wealth affect the initial decision to leave the natal home. Household resources and use of farmland, along with the young men’s own education, media exposure, travel, and marital behavior, influence the decision to make the departure from the natal home permanent. Our findings explain why previous results regarding household fission and those focused on migration have provided such mixed results, and we establish a new framework for thinking about how families and individuals manage living situations.     

Motives for interqenerational transfers: Evidence from Malaysia

In this paper we discuss a number of hypotheses about motives for intergenerational transfers within the family. We use data on time and money transfers between generations in Malaysia, where there is neither Social Security nor Medicare, to explore these hypotheses empirically. We find evidence supporting the hypotheses that children are an important source of old age security and that old age security is, in part, children s repayment for parental investments in their education. This repayment is partly a function of the children’s in come and, in the case of females, a function of their spouse’s in come. We also find evidence supporting the hypotheses that parents and children engage in the exchange of time help for money.     

Feathered nest/gilded cage: Parental income and leaving home in the transition to adulthood

The growing study of leaving home in young adulthood in the United States has been hampered by data and measurement problems, which are producing a major theoretical confusion about the role of parental resources in influencing young adults’ leaving home. Does high parental income retain young adults in the home or subsidize their leaving (and parental privacy)? This paper uses the 1984 panel of Survey of Income and Program Participation to clarify this issue, and shows that the effects of parental resources differ depending on the route out of the home under consideration (marriage or premarital residential independence). Effects change substantially over the nest-leaving ages, but relatively few differences are found between young men and young women.     

Economic incentives for financial and residential independence

In this paper we examine the impact of the resources of children and of their parents on the children’s transition to residential and financial independence. Previous studies of this transition focused primarily on the impact of family structure and parent-child relationships on the decision to leave home, but much less is known about the role of economic factors in the transition to independence. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) for the period 1968–1988, we estimate discrete-hazard models of the probability of achieving residential and financial independence. We find that the child’s wage opportunities and the parents’ income are important determinants of establishing independence. The effect of parental income changes with the child’s age. We also find some evidence that federal tax policy influences the decision to become independent, although the magnitude of this effect is quite small.     

Life course transitions of American children: Parental cohabitation, marriage, and single motherhood

We examine the life course transitions into and from families headed by unmarried cohabiting couples for a recent cohort of American children. Life table estimates, based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth mother-child files, indicate about one in four children will live in a family headed by a cohabiting couple sometime during childhood. Economic uncertainty is an important factor determining whether children in single-parent families subsequently share a residence with a mother's unmarried partner. Moreover, virtually all children in cohabiting-couple families will experience rapid subsequent changes in family status. Our estimates provide a point of departure for future work on children's exposure to parental cohabitation and its social and economic implications.     

Stymied ambition: does a lack of economic freedom lead to migration?

We investigate the relationship between economic freedom and international migration for the 1980–2010 period using a dataset on migration from 91 emerging countries to the 20 most attractive OECD destination countries. We find that more economic freedom at home discourages high-skilled migration, but not low-skilled migration. The negative association between economic freedom and high-skilled emigration also holds when we estimate (dynamic) panel models that allow for endogeneity in the economic freedom-migration nexus. In sum, our findings suggest that high-skilled migration is especially responsive to the economic incentives resulting from economic freedom.     

The Relevance of the 'Easterlin hypothesis' and the 'new home economics' to fertility movements in Great Britain

Summary The hypothesis that a family's economic status relative to its aspirations (relative economic status) is an important determinant of its fertility behaviour has been developed and applied to the explanation of swings in American fertility by R. A. Easterlin. However, a recent application by Butz and Ward of a model derived from the 'new home economics' (pioneered by Becker and Mincer) strongly suggests that relative economic status is not the dominant factor in explaining fertility movements in the U.S.A. Rather, both current men's and women's wages operate independently in explaining the movement in fertility, and in particular the decline in fertility is attributed to rising women's wages. In this paper we explore the relevance of both the Easterlin hypothesis and the hypotheses derived from the 'new home economics' to the 1955-75 fertility swing in Great Britain. We find that we must reject the Easterlin hypothesis on the basis of the measures of relative economic status suggested by Easterlin and Wachter. A variant of the Easterlin hypothesis suggested by Oppenheimer does receive some support from the available evidence, and the evidence provides strong support for the model of fertility behaviour derived from the 'new home economics', which emphasizes the distinction between the effects of changes in men's and women's real wages on fertility decisions. The cause of the fertility decline is attributed to rising women's wages and employment opportunities through their direct effect on the opportunity cost of time and children among working wives and through their effect on the labour force participation of married women of childbearing age. The test of this model and the estimates of its parameters are not definitive, however, because of deficiencies in the data and problems of statistical estimation. We nevertheless conclude that both this model and the Oppenheimer variant of the Easterlin hypothesis, as well as other elements of a more comprehensive economic theory of fertility, point to a continuation of low fertility and the possibility of a secular decline with fertility approaching some lower asymptote.     

Children’s Development and Parental Input: Evidence From the UK Millennium Cohort Study

In this study, we use the UK Millennium Cohort Study to estimate a dynamic factor model of child development. Our model follows the children from birth until 7 years of age and allows for both cognitive and noncognitive abilities in children. We find a significant self-productivity effect in both cognitive and noncognitive development, as well as some evidence of dynamic dependence across different abilities. The activities that parents carry out with children at home (parental investment) have a significant effect on children’s development; we find substantial evidence of two distinct latent parental investment variables with differential effects across the two abilities.     

Equality and fertility in the kibbutz

The kibbutz' quest for equality makes a member's consumption independent of his contribution to production, and the kibbutz itself responsible for almost all childrearing expenses. This fundamental departure from the standard organization of economic life of course affects fertility. We find that a parent's predicted wage (as determined by the parent's individual characteristics) has a smaller positive effect on fertility in the city than in the kibbutz, and that a parent's education has a negative effect on fertility in the city and either a smaller negative effect or no effect in the kibbutz.Correspondence to Leif Danziger.We thank the referees and Alessandro Cigno for helpful comments. Leif Danziger acknowledges the financial support from the Faculty of Arts, York University.     

Children of Migrants: The Cumulative Impact of Parental Migration on Children’s Education and Health Outcomes in China

Since the end of 1990s, approximately 160 million Chinese rural workers migrated to cities for work. Because of restrictions on migrant access to local health and education systems, many rural children are left behind in home villages to grow up without parental care. This article examines how exposure to cumulative parental migration affects children’s health and education outcomes. Using the Rural-Urban Migration Survey in China (RUMiC) data, we measure the share of children’s lifetime during which parents were away from home. We instrument this measure of parental absence with weather changes in their home villages when parents were aged 16–25, when they were most likely to initiate migration. Results show a sizable adverse effect of exposure to parental migration on the health and education outcomes of children: in particular, boys. We also find that the use of the contemporaneous measure for parental migration in previous studies is likely to underestimate the effect of exposure to parental migration on children’s outcomes.     

The dynamics of homeownership among the 50+ in Europe

We use life history data covering households in 13 European countries to analyse residential moves past the age of 50. We observe four types of moves: renting to owning, owning to renting, trading up or trading down for homeowners. We find that in the younger group (aged 50–64), trading up and purchase decisions prevail; in the older group (65+), trading down and selling are more common. Overall, moves are rare, particularly in countries characterised by high transaction costs. Most moves are driven by changes in household composition (divorce, widowhood, nest leaving by children), but economic factors play a role: low-income households who are house-rich and cash-poor are more likely to sell their home late in life.     

Children’s Experiences After the Unintended Birth of a Sibling

This study examines whether children with a younger sibling whose birth was unintended experience larger declines in the quality of their home environment and larger increases in behavioral problems than children whose younger sibling’s birth was intended. We use data from the NLSY79 to estimate cross-lag regression models that assess changes in the home environment and children’s behavioral problems after the birth of a sibling (intended or unintended). Results are consistent with our hypotheses, finding that, indeed, unintended births have negative spillover effects. Compared with children whose sibling’s birth was intended, both boys and girls whose sibling’s birth was unintended experienced larger declines in the quality of their home environment, and boys had larger increases in behavioral problems. We also find some unexpected evidence that mistimed births may have larger negative effects than unwanted births. This deserves further research, and we offer some possible explanations that could guide those investigations.     

The links between women’s employment and children at home: Variations in low- and middle-income countries by world region

As fertility declines in low- and middle-income countries, the time women devote to childbearing and rearing may also be reduced. This shift has been described as one of the positive consequences of the demographic transition, as it opens opportunities for women to pursue educational and employment opportunities that were previously constrained by the demands of bearing and raising children. We estimate the numbers of children residing at home (with their mother) for women in 58 countries in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. We then examine the association between women’s employment and having children at home. Finally, we assess trends over recent decades in the relationship between employment and childbearing, and differences in this relationship by mother’s occupation. We find a negative association between women’s employment and having children at home; this association varies substantially by world region, age of child, and mother’s occupation.     

Welfare, work, and changes in mothers’ living arrangements in low-income families

Data from a two-wave survey of low-income families in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio are used to replicate recent reports of a modest increase in the number of low-income children living in two-adult families and to analyze the increase. We find that most of the increase occurred through the addition of a man other than the biological father to the household and that more of it occurred through cohabitation than through marriage. Moreover, across the two waves, cohabiting and marital unions were highly unstable. We review research on stepfamilies and on instability in children’s living arrangements, and we conclude that the kinds of two-adult families being formed in these low-income central-city neighborhoods may not benefit children as much as policy-makers hope. In addition, we investigate the associations between marital and cohabiting transitions, on the one hand, and transitions into and out of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) receipt, employment, and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) usage between the two waves on the other. We find that marital transitions are related to TANF and employment transitions but that cohabiting transitions are not. We suggest that low-income mothers may view marriage as more of an economic partnership than cohabitation and may expect more of an economic contribution from a husband than from a cohabiting partner.     

Parenthood and Leaving Home in Young Adulthood

With increases in nonmarital fertility, the sequencing of transitions in early adulthood has become even more complex. Once the primary transition out of the parental home, marriage was first replaced by nonfamily living and cohabitation; more recently, many young adults have become parents before entering a coresidential union. Studies of leaving home, however, have not examined the role of early parenthood. Using the Young Adult Study of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (n = 4,674), we use logistic regression to analyze parenthood both as a correlate of leaving home and as a route from the home. We find that even in mid-adolescence, becoming a parent is linked with leaving home. Coming from a more affluent family is linked with leaving home via routes that do not involve children rather than those that do, and having a warm relationship with either a mother or a father retards leaving home, particularly to nonfamily living, but is not related to parental routes out of the home.     

Time for Children: Trends in the Employment Patterns of Parents, 1967–2009

Using data from the 1967–2009 years of the March Current Population Surveys (CPS), we examine two important resources for children’s well-being: time and money. We document trends in parental employment, from the perspective of children, and show what underlies these trends. We find that increases in family work hours mainly reflect movements into jobs by parents—particularly mothers, who in prior decades would have remained at home. This increase in market work has raised incomes for children in the typical two-parent family but not for those in lone-parent households. Time use data from 1975 and 2003–2008 reveal that working parents spend less time engaged in primary childcare than their counterparts without jobs but more than employed peers in previous cohorts. Analysis of 2004 work schedule data suggests that non-daytime work provides an alternative method of coordinating employment schedules for some dual-earner families.     

Group living decisions as youths transition to adulthood

This study follows teens through young adulthood as they transition to independent living. We focus on a little studied issue: why some youths live in groups rather than alone or with parents. This choice is important because the size of the group has a substantial impact on the demand for dwelling units; the more youths per dwelling the lower is aggregate demand and the greater is population density. Our study also adds to the knowledge of which factors influence youths' choice of destination as they leave the parental home. The empirical testing uses a discrete hazard model within a multinomial logit framework to allow for more than one possible state transition. We find that economic variables have little impact on the decision of whether to exit to a large versus a small group, while socio-demographic variables matter. We also test a new push-pull hypothesis and find that the pull of economic variables on the probability of exiting the parental home increases as youths reach their mid to late twenties. Received: 15 July 1999/Accepted: 15 May 2000