Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, via Verdi 26, 38122 Trento, Italy.
Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, via Verdi 26, 38122 Trento, Italy.
Adv Life Course Res. 2024 Mar;59:100594. doi: 10.1016/j.alcr.2024.100594. Epub 2024 Feb 1.
In 2020, COVID-19-related governmental restrictions forced individuals to radically change their habits, possibly impacting on their living arrangements. Whether COVID-19 affected young adults' propensity to leave the parental home is still unknown; Southern Europe is of particular interest, as youth experience the "latest-late" transition to adulthood, face uncertainty in the labor market, and receive low welfare support. Using EU-SILC longitudinal data from Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal, this study examines how home-leaving rates evolved in the short-term and explores the relationship between governmental restrictions, economic characteristics of households and young adults, and leaving home behaviors. Descriptive analyses reveal that the share of young adults leaving the parental home in Southern Europe between 2019 and 2020 slightly increased compared to previous years. Discrete-time event history models show that the propensity to leave the parental home increases with the stringency of policy measures. Young adults with the highest likelihood to leave home are employed individuals whose households are in the lowest income quintile as well as students from the highest income quintile, suggesting that, in these countries, residential independence is associated with either the acquisition of economic resources in the labor market or the availability of family resources. We interpret this result in favor of an "independence effect" exerted by COVID-19-related restrictions on young adults; future research might establish whether this trend is temporary or persistent over time.
2020 年，与 COVID-19 相关的政府限制迫使个人彻底改变其习惯，这可能会影响他们的居住安排。COVID-19 是否影响了年轻人离开父母家的意愿尚不清楚；南欧尤其值得关注，因为年轻人经历着“最晚最晚”的成年过渡，面临劳动力市场的不确定性，并获得低水平的福利支持。本研究使用来自希腊、西班牙、意大利和葡萄牙的欧盟-社会融合调查纵向数据，考察了短期内在家率的演变情况，并探讨了政府限制、家庭和年轻人的经济特征与离开家行为之间的关系。描述性分析表明，与前几年相比，2019 年至 2020 年期间，南欧年轻人离开父母家的比例略有增加。离散时间事件历史模型显示，离开父母家的意愿随着政策措施的严格程度而增加。最有可能离开家的年轻人是就业者，他们的家庭处于收入最低五分位数，以及来自收入最高五分位数的学生，这表明在这些国家，居住独立性与劳动力市场中经济资源的获取或家庭资源的可用性有关。我们根据 COVID-19 相关限制对年轻人产生的“独立性效应”来解释这一结果；未来的研究可能会确定这种趋势是暂时的还是随着时间的推移而持续的。
