Ethnic Differences in Leaving Home: Timing and Pathways

The dynamics of leaving home for youth from migrant families in the Netherlands are examined using individual administrative data on the 1977 and 1983 birth cohorts for the period 1999–2004. A competing-risks approach is applied to distinguish leaving home for union formation, to live independently, and to share with others. Migrant youth, and particularly Turkish and Moroccan youth, leave home at a significantly younger age than Dutch youth, given the relevant background variables. This is remarkable, given the older ages at which young people in the origin countries leave the parental home. The result may be seen as evidence of how the potential effects of cultural norms are counter-affected by other factors, such as the facilities of the welfare state and the awkward position of migrant youth between two cultures. Considering the pathways out of home, the analysis largely confirms the expected pattern: Turkish and Moroccan youth leave home more often for union formation and particularly marriage, while this pathway is of minor importance for Dutch youth at early ages

Male Breadwinning Revisited: How Specialisation, Gender Role Attitudes and Work Characteristics Affect Overwork and Underwork in Europe

We examine how male breadwinning and fatherhood relate to men’s overwork and underwork in western Europe. Male breadwinners should be less likely to experience overwork than other men, particularly when they have children, if specialising in paid work suits them. However, multinomial logistic regression analysis of the European Social Survey data from 2010 (n = 4662) challenges this position: male breadwinners, with and without children, want to work fewer than their actual hours, making visible one of the downsides of specialisation. Male breadwinners wanting to work fewer hours is specifically related to the job interfering with family life, as revealed by a comparison of the average marginal effects of variables across models. Work–life interference has an effect over and beyond the separate effects of work characteristics and family structure, showing the salience of the way work and life articulate

Gender, turning points, and boomerangs: returning home in young adulthood in Great Britain

The idea of a generation of young adults “boomeranging” back to the parental home has gained widespread currency in the British popular press. However, there is little empirical research identifying either increasing rates of returning home or the factors associated with this trend. This article addresses this gap in the literature using data from a long-running household panel survey to examine the occurrence and determinants of returning to the parental home. We take advantage of the longitudinal design of the British Household Panel Survey (1991–2008) and situate returning home in the context of other life-course transitions. We demonstrate how turning points in an individual’s life course—such as leaving full-time education, unemployment, or partnership dissolution—are key determinants of returning home. An increasingly unpredictable labor market means that graduate employment cannot be taken for granted following university graduation, and returning home upon completion of higher education is becoming normative. We also find that gender moderates the relationship among partnership dissolution, parenthood, and returning to the parental home, reflecting the differential welfare support in Great Britain for single parents compared with nonresident fathers and childless young adults

Comparing living arrangements of immigrant young adults in Spain and the United States

How and with whom young adults live is associated with their socioeconomic status. Migration experience further shapes preference and opportunity in choosing one's living arrangement. Given limited literature on immigrant young adults living arrangements especially in a comparative perspective, this paper investigates the issue comparing Spain and the United States. Based on the 2000 US Census and the 2001 Spanish Census, the paper compares four forms of living arrangements (living alone, living with parents, living with a partner/spouse, and living in an extended family) between immigrants and the native-born and among immigrants in the two destination contexts. We focus on the role of age at migration and country of birth in living arrangements. The sample includes young adults aged 18-35 years and in the case of immigrants: those who migrated at age 1-16 years (n=518,882 natives and 7,620 immigrants in Spain; 1,836,401 natives and 192,205 immigrants in the United States). Using multinomial logistic regression and controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, it is found that immigrants' living arrangements are more similar to those of the natives than to those of the same immigrant group in the other destination country. Immigrant young adults in Spain have more similar living arrangements to the native-born in Spain than to their fellow immigrants in the United States. There remains however substantial variation by age at migration and country of birth, with those migrated at young age and those born in Western Europe having the most similar living arrangements to the natives both in Spain and the United States