Housing and family trajectories of young adults in five countries: Sweden, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy and Serbia: Sequence analysis of European social survey data

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse housing and family transitions among the young and young adults in five countries: Sweden, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy and Serbia, representing the Social-democratic, Conservative, Liberal, Mediterranean and (SEE) Post-socialist models of welfare regimes. For the purposes of our analysis, we used round 9 of European Social Survey data. The focus of our analysis was on the rotating module ?Timing of life? which aims to capture the views of European citizens about their life courses and their strategies to plan their own lives, as well as measures the timing of key life events. Variables from this module were used to construct life trajectories of respondents which are statistically modelled as sequences. Interpretation of the obtained results leads to two important conclusions. First, the differences in the types of family transitions of young people between countries are significant. Second, these differences can be explained both by individual characteristics and by the social and cultural context that determines the horizon of opportunities for young people. Even after controlling the effects of individual characteristics such as gender, age, education, parental education, religious affiliation, statistical differences between countries persist, indicating that a significant part of variability cannot be explained on an individual-level but exclusively by social and institutional context.