Abstract
Young people are facing challenges in transitioning to housing autonomy because of changes in labour market conditions in recent years. This article explores the effects of youth unemployment and non-standard employment on the likelihood of leaving the parental home. We adopt a dynamic modelling approach, and use data from a large longitudinal British survey covering the years 2009–2014. We find that unemployment and part-time work, but not the duration of the contract, have a negative effect on the likelihood of obtaining housing autonomy. We also find that past as well as anticipated unemployment have significant negative effects, which suggests that the decision about whether to move out depends on the individual’s longer-term labour market trajectory. The analysis also reveals gender differences in part-time work, but not in unemployment once we take into account unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity.
Highlights
Leaving the parental home and achieving housing autonomy has become a more protracted process in recent years
The results showed that when examining housing autonomy among young people, it is important to control for time-invariant unobserved factors
These results suggest that the effects of part-time employment on housing autonomy operate through past experiences, which can have long-term effects
Summary
Leaving the parental home and achieving housing autonomy has become a more protracted process in recent years. Other studies find substantial gaps in perceived job security between permanent and temporary workers (Inanc, 2015) Despite these strong theoretical arguments, the empirical evidence on the impact of non-standard forms of employment on housing autonomy is limited and inconclusive. Previous research suggests that young people’s careers often involve repeated and prolonged spells of unemployment and non-standard forms of employment (Gagliarducci, 2005; Månsson and Ottosson, 2011) The accumulation of such experiences may drain the economic resources and hamper the housing autonomy of young people over the longer run. Previous empirical evidence regarding gender differences in the effects of labour market experiences on housing autonomy has been mixed, with some studies reporting no clear differences between men and women (Jacob and Kleinert, 2007; Wolbers, 2007) and others finding stark gender differences What is the impact of past and anticipated employment experiences, and how do they mediate the contemporaneous effects of unemployment and non-standard forms of employment?
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