Changing Times and Places: First Homeleaving Among Late Baby Boomers and Early Millennials

• In Event: 563 - Regular Session. Life Course Insecurities: Individuals and Cohorts in Transition

Abstract

Millennials’ delayed residential independence is widely accepted as fact, but past research has not examined the timing of first departures over time using longitudinal data for multiple cohorts, assessing the importance of not only demographic and socioeconomic traits, but multiple types of local institutional structures across labor market, housing, and education domains. I address this gap using the NLSY79 and NLSY97, studying the timing of first homeleaving and associated social roles adopted during first departures for late Baby Boomers (LBB) and early Millennials (EM). EMs’ first homeleaving is complex, as their age-specific probabilities of departure are not linear or uniformly lower than LBB from 18 to 26. Differences in the mid-20s are partially explained by rising housing costs. Leavers are more heterogeneous, with EMs more likely to leave home to attend college full-time, and more weakly attached to the labor market, working only part-time or not at all. Accounting for local institutional structures shows under what conditions young adults use coresidence with parents as a safety net and how these structures have evolved to interact with diverse groups of young adults. These findings substantiate the diverging destinies of children by where they grow up during the transition to adulthood.

Author

• Sung S. Park, University of California, Los Angeles