Explaining cross-national differences in leaving home.

Abstract

There are large cross‐national differences in the age of leaving home. The literature offers cultural, economic, and institutional explanations for these differences but has not examined all three explanations in one study. We examine these three explanations using data of the European Social Survey (ESS) from 2002 to 2016, supplemented with year‐specific macro‐level indicators from other data sources. We use a dynamic pseudo‐panel design, allowing us to track the home‐leaving behaviour of cohorts born between 1970 and 1999 in 22 European countries. Our findings show that the three sets of explanations are additive rather than competing, each explaining some of the cross‐national differences in leaving home. The cultural context forms the most important explanation for the cross‐national variation. In total, we explain 80% of cross‐national variation in leaving home. Important predictors are religiosity, individualistic family values, change in youth unemployment, GDP and the net replacement rate.