Sait Bayrakdar, University College London Philipp Lersch, University of Cologne

1. Family dynamics and young adults’ homeownership transitions in Britain, Germany and Australia Sait Bayrakdar, University College London Philipp Lersch, University of Cologne Sergi Vidal, Autonomous University of Barcelona  Rory Coulter, University College London The Understanding Society Scientific Conference, 11-13 July 2017 University of Essex

2. Relevance • Homeownership • An important indicator of later life-outcomes • Better quality housing, particularly for families • An aspect of intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.

3. Relevance Widespread belief that Britain’s housing system is ‘broken’ • Restrictions and constraints particularly acute for young people, so-called millennials Increased focus on intergenerationally ‘linked lives’ and vertical flows of support within families “Without help from the “Bank of Mum and Dad”, many young people will struggle to get on the housing ladder. The average couple in the private rented sector now send roughly half their salary to their landlord each month, making it nigh on impossible to save for a deposit.” Housing White Paper, February 2017

4. Aim • To examine how family life course events (primarily child bearing and partnership formation) and parental background (‘linked lives’) are interlinked with young adults’ homeownership transitions. • To compare how the influence of (i) family transitions and (ii) parental background varies across three Western countries with different constellations of contextual conditions.

5. Background • Housing outcomes and homeownership of young adults shaped by • Individual characteristics, education, labour market participation and socio-economic position (Iacovou, 2010, Stone et al 2011; 2014) • Life events: family formation, (Thomas and Mulder 2016, Stone et al, 2014) • high levels of intergenerational transmission of houseownership (Blaauboer, 2010; Coulter, 2016) • macro-contextual characteristics

6. Background • Contextual factors are expected to affect housing destinations, in particular homeownership (Mulder et al., 2015, Priemus and Whitehead, 2014, Dewilde, 2017). • Differences in contextual settings are to create different patterns for home ownership across countries. • UK: high marketization, dual market, relatively big social rental sector, ideology of homeownership, student loans • Germany: high marketization, unitary market, renting as a secure and viable option • Australia: high marketization, dual market, almost no social rental sector

7. Step 1: Preliminary Approach Use BHPS/Understanding Society, SOEP and HILDa Initial housing destinations (all countries) • Select young people in the parental home (<35) and model first tenure destination using discrete time EHA

8. Transition by destination (2001-2015) UK: 4,947 males; 4,139 females DE: 8,544 males; 6,676 females AU: 5,966 males; 5,247 females

9. Step 2: Homeownership transitions Homeownership transitions (UK and Germany so far…) • Select young people aged 18 living at home and use discrete time EHA to model transitions into homeownership • Range of life course event and parental background predictors • BHPS/UKHLS (UK), from 1991 to 2016 • 15774 person years (4625 individuals) • SOEP (Germany), from 1985 to 2015 • 48,860 person years (7,906 individuals) • HILDA (Australia), from 2001 to 2015 (coming soon!) • Sample members who were at the parental home at 18 until they become homeowners .

10. Data • Dependent variable: • Parental home/rental sector vs homeownership (defined as living in an owned dwelling with no parent present) • Individual-level independent variables: • Age, sex, foreign-born, poor health • Education (lower secondary, higher secondary, vocational higher education, higher education) • Couple income (high, middle, low) • Main activity (secure employed, other employed, unemployed, inactive, full-time education)

11. Data • Life-course events variables • Years since leaving parental home (0, 1, 2+) • Years before/after first child (-1, 0, 1, 2+ years) • Years before/after cohabitation (-1, 0, 1, 2+ years) • Years before/after marriage (-1, 0, 1, 2+ years) • Partnership dissolution between t-1 and t

12. Data • Parental characteristics at 18 • Parental degree • Parental income (low, middle, high) • Parental tenancy (homeownership vs renting) • Parental status (both parents, single parent, step parent) • Sibship size • Other controls: • Regions (London/SE for UK, West Germany for Germany) • Interview years

13. Individual-level characteristics

14. Life-course events

15. Parental Background

16. Conclusions • Individual factors • Strong impact of education and employment status in UK • Leaving parental home for rental sector has negative impact (more in UK) • Life course events • Having first child has a lagged negative effect in UK • Cohabitation and marriage has positive impact (both in UK and DE) • Effects of parental background: • Intergenerational continuation of tenure both in UK and DE • Parental education (UK) and parental income (DE) have significant impact • Strong penalties for economically disadvantaged individuals in UK • No strong differences in terms of parental characteristics • No strong differences in terms of life course events

17. BHPS – Understanding Society Harmonization Challenges and Issues • Slightly longer gap in observations between W18 of BHPS and W2 • Attrition from W18 to W2 • Using interview year pairs to separate the effect of change in panel from the effect of time • Attrition analysis • Some variables have slight changes (i.e. health limiting daily activities, relationship in egoalt files) • pid’s and pidp’s not being harmonised makes it difficult to distribute information from one dataset to the other.

18. Acknowledgements This research is supported by an Economic and Social Research Council Future Research Leaders award [ES/L0094981/1]. Additional financial support has been provided by the Isaac Newton Trust. Understanding Society (UKHLS) is an initiative funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and various Government Departments, with scientific leadership by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, and survey delivery by NatCen Social Research and Kantar Public. The research data are distributed by the UK Data Service. The authors are solely responsible for all analyses and interpretations of the data. Contact: s.bayrakdar@ucl.ac.uk Thank you!

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