Leaving home across the recent cohorts in Italy: does economic vulnerability due to labour market status matter?

Abstract

We focus on the process of leaving home among young Italians and aim to discern: (a) the extent to which the potential economic vulnerability associated with certain individual labour market conditions affects the pathway of leaving the parental home; (b) whether the impact of such conditions has changed over generations of young adults. Data come from the pooling of two cross-sectional rounds of the ‘Families and Social Subjects’ survey conducted by the Italian National Institute of Statistics in 2009 and 2016. Specifically, we consider young adults who at the time of interview were between the ages of 20 and 44, for a total of 22,218 respondents. We employ discrete-time event history models, including a competing risks approach. Our findings suggest that labour market status differs in its influence according to reason for exit and gender. While we observe a clearly negative impact of being out of the labour market for both union and non-union related reasons for men, this negative impact is observed only for non-union-related motives for women. Meanwhile, economic uncertainty connected with precarious jobs does not necessarily have a negative impact on the risk of leaving parental home, both for union and non-union related reasons. Furthermore, we see signs of differences across cohorts relative to this latter set of motives for men. The results highlight the importance of considering reasons for exit in analyses of departure from the parental home.