The Connections between Family Formation and First-time Home Ownership in the Context of West Germany and the Netherlands

Using data from retrospective life course surveys held in West Germany and the Netherlands in the 1980s and early 1990s, we investigate the interconnections between first partnership, first marriage, and first childbirth, on the one hand, and first-time home ownership, on the other. We consider the temporal connection between events in the family life course and home ownership from various angles, proceeding from survival analyses to analyses of the timing and ordering of the distinct events and a multivariate analysis of the transition to home ownership. We find marked differences between countries and cohorts in this temporal connection.