Leaving home in Europe: the experience of cohorts born around 1960

In this paper we analyse the leaving home experience of men and women born around 1960 in 16 European countries. We use extensive empirical evidence from Fertility and Family Survey data, providing a large-scale comparison. We focus on some key indicators of the process of leaving home: the timing, sequencing and synchronisation of leaving home with the end of education and the formation of a first union. As far as these dimensions of leaving home are concerned, Europe appears to be extremely heterogeneous, and explaining this will undoubtedly be a challenge. The complex interplay between the present economic situation of young people and long-term institutional and cultural factors is thought to be the main driving factor. Our findings constitute a benchmark against which subsequent behaviour, such as that of cohorts coming of age after the fall of the Iron Curtain, could be compared. (AUTHORS)Europe

Political economy and life course patterns: the heterogeneity of occupational, family and household trajectories of young spaniards

We explore the strong linkages between macro changes and the dynamics of educational, occupational, family, and residential careers of young Spanish adults born between 1945 and 1974. We review theory and evidence on macro factors: changes in the welfare system, centrality of the family as a service provider, and the changing role of women. We outline some hypotheses of how life course trajectories, and their heterogeneity, change across cohorts. We build data on sequences of states using FFS. In our analysis, we find an increase in the discontinuity of careers and of the heterogeneity among cohort members, especially for employment. Women´s careers are becoming more similar to those of men. Family and household formation is postponed, with a limited spread of post-nuclear family forms.

Cohabitation, marriage, first birth: the interrelationship of family formation events in Spain

In this paper we investigate (1) the mutual causal relationship between first union formation and first childbirth, and (2) the existence of constant common determinants of these two events. It is argued that (unmeasured) common factors reflect differentials among the population in value orientations and in norms about the sequencing of events. We apply event history techniques to retrospective survey data for Spain, allowing for the correlation between unobserved heterogeneity components belonging to each process. Our findings confirm the strong interrelationship between union formation and first birth. After controlling for these common factors, we find that the risk of conception increases immediately at marriage, and it continues to be high during the following four years. Entry into cohabitation produces much smaller increases in the relative risk. The effect of the conception of the first child on union formation is especially strong during pregnancy, but declines sharply after delivery.