Clara H. Mulder

First-time Home-ownership in the Family Life Course: A West German-Dutch Comparison

The transition to first-time home-ownership is made at increasingly younger ages in both West Germany and the Netherlands. This trend is stronger in the Netherlands than in Germany, however. There are also marked differences between the two countries in the extent to which first-time home-ownership is connected with events in the family life course (marriage and childbirth) and the availability of resources from the parental family. These differences can be understood in terms of differences in house prices, housing policy (subsidies and other regulations) and other differences in the legal and financial systems.

Residential relocations in the life course

The life course perspective has proved to be a powerful instrument in developing a general theoretical framework to interpret a variety of phenomena pertaining to residential relocation. The first phenomenon is that relocations are instrumental to goals arising from a specific life course trajectory or “career”. It is important to distinguish between moves triggered by the educational career, the labor career, the family career and the housing career. The second phenomenon is that even those careers that are not the actual trigger for the move, are still pertinent to the relocation decision. These other careers condition the decision by providing the resources for the move and by imposing restrictions on geographical mobility. The third phenomenon is that residential relocation, which has a positive effect on the triggering career, can have a detrimental effect on other careers or on the careers of other household members. The attractiveness of the life course perspective is that it allows for feedback effects between these phenomena, thereby improving the understanding of relocation behavior.

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.

Moving and Union Dissolution

This paper examines the effect of migration and residential mobility on union dissolution among married and cohabiting couples. Moving is a stressful life event, and a large, multidisciplinary literature has shown that family migration often benefits one partner (usually the man) more than the other. Even so, no study to date has examined the possible impact of within-nation geographical mobility on union dissolution. We base our longitudinal analysis on retrospective event-history data from Austria. Our results show that couples who move frequently have a significantly higher risk of union dissolution, and we suggest a variety of mechanisms that may explain this.

Home-ownership regimes and low fertility

This paper investigates the association between the level of fertility and the organization of homeownership in Western countries. It distinguishes four homeownership regimes, based on the share of owner-occupied housing and access to mortgages. It is argued that one homeownership regime is particularly associated with problematic housing-market entry and, therefore, unfriendly to family formation: the ‘difficult’ regime, which combines a high share of owner-occupation and low access to mortgages. It is found that countries with this particular homeownership regime have the lowest levels of fertility.

Spatial Flexibility in Job Mobility: Macrolevel Opportunities and Microlevel Restrictions

Disequilibria among regional labour markets persist through spatial inflexibility in job mobility resulting from restrictions in migration and long-distance commuting. This contribution analyses workplace mobility—the acceptance of a job at a great distance from the place of residence—using a direct measure which includes both migration and long commutes as means for covering this distance. Two sources of spatial inflexibility are identified. The first is a low overall chance of general job mobility; the second is a limited search area leading to low workplace mobility. In a two-step analysis we show that workers who find another job are a highly selective group. Within this group the variation in accepting a job at a great distance is wide, because of the individual restrictions that are often gendered. We also show that ample availability of job opportunities stimulates general job mobility and reduces workplace mobility, but only after controlling for individual restrictions. These findings are in line with the spatial mismatch hypothesis.

Life events and the gap between intention to move and actual mobility

Life events are frequently mentioned as a reason why people do not behave according to their mobility intentions. However, there is little empirical evidence concerning the role of life events in the discrepancy between stated mobility intentions and actual mobility behaviour. The authors clarify the role of life events in this discrepancy using a longitudinal dataset from the Netherlands, in which the Housing Demand Survey 2002 is enriched with register data from the Social Statistical Database. Union dissolution, union formation, and childbirth trigger moves among people who had initial intended to stay in the current home. These events also act as an extra stimulus to move for those who already intended to move for reasons other than household or job change. In contrast, the event of losing a job prevents people from realising their intention to move. The results also suggest that the majority of the moves after union dissolution are made by people who did not have an initial intention to move.

Residential Experience and Residential Environment Choice over the Life-course

The study reported in this article answers the question: how does experience with a certain type of residential environment contribute to the explanation of residential environment choice? The issues under investigation are whether residential experience with cities, suburbs and rural areas increases the probability of return migration and whether residential experience increases the probability of moving to other places with the same type of residential environment. The probability of moving to a city, suburb or rural area is investigated by applying multinomial logistic regression on a retrospective dataset of life-courses of more than 3000 Netherlands respondents. The results indicate that city experience and suburb experience only increase the probability of return migration, whereas rural experience also increases the probability of moving to another rural area.

The changing effect of home ownership on residential mobility in the Netherlands, 1980-98

In most Western countries, home owners are much less likely to change residence than renters. In the last few decades, the rise in home ownership in the Netherlands has been spectacular. This would imply that the population has become less mobile, which has consequences for the functioning of the housing market—at least, if the relationship between home ownership and residential mobility has not changed. This research addresses the question of whether the effect of home ownership on the probability of residential mobility has changed over the last few decades and if so, how. Using data from the 1981–98 Netherlands Housing Demand surveys and logistic regression models, it is found that the difference between home owners and renters in residential mobility has changed over time. The results indicate a decrease in the effect of home ownership with an interruption in 1984–85. This finding might indicate stability in the effect of home ownership, except for periods of booms or busts on the housing market.

Leaving Home for College and Gaining Independence

As more and more young US adults attend college it has become an increasingly important filter in the process of becoming an independent household. Now for a large number of young adults living in the USA, living away at college is a first step in the process of gaining residential and economic independence. We analyze leaving home to go to college, the choice between returning home and becoming independent after living away at college, and the influence of experience with living away at college on becoming an independent household. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and multilevel event-history and logistic-regression models to show that the likelihood of leaving home for college is positively affected by the fathers education and the parental income. Unlike in previous research, we find evidence for the ‘feathered-nest’ hypothesis, in that the likelihood of returning home increases with parental income.