Mobility of young people during the transition to adulthood in Britain

Alina Pelikh, University of Liverpool
Hill Kulu, University of Liverpool

This paper examines mobility of young people in England and Wales, who began their transition to adulthood after 1990. We look at the dynamics of cohort and gender changes in mobility among young people, controlling for both personal background characteristics (such as parental socioeconomic status) and interaction with other life domains, such as employment, education and partnership histories. The analysis is conducted on 18 waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), an annual survey consisting of a nationally representative sample of households recruited in 1991. To gain a holistic picture of young people’s moves, we apply the techniques of multistate event history analysis, which is based on the set of competing risks models for repeated events (sequence of long- or short-distance moves). We demonstrate that the youngest cohort postpones leaving the parental home, but once they leave the parental nest, they show higher mobility than the two older cohorts. Our results confirm an overall trend of females leaving the parental home earlier than males on average by 22 months. The gender differences tend to disappear with the higher order of move. Socioeconomic differences, on the contrary, persist regardless of cohort or period effects; young people from more advantaged background are more mobile across the early life course.