Parental socioeconomic status and age at leaving home in Europe: Exploring regional differences

Leaving the parental home is a milestone in young people's transition to adulthood. The timing of leaving home varies greatly across European countries; however, evidence on the association between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and the age at leaving home in a comparative perspective is mixed, and subnational variation has received little attention. The module on the timing of life events included in Round 3 (2006) and 9 (2018) of the European Social Survey offers the opportunity to study how parental SES is associated with the age at leaving home, and how this association varies at the national and regional level for a sample of respondents born between the 1950s and the 1980s in 175 regions across 29 European countries. Results from three-level linear regression models indicate that a high parental SES postpones women's age at leaving home in most Southern and Eastern European countries, where state support to young people is low and family ties are strong, whereas the association between parental SES and the age at leaving home is less clear-cut in Western and Nordic countries. Between-country variation in the association between parental SES and the age at home-leaving prevails over within-country variation, suggesting that the role of the parental background is country-specific and that other unobserved factors may explain within-country heterogeneity.