“Stuck in Place” with Family? A Longitudinal Analysis of Multigenerational Households and Neighborhood Attainment

• In Event: 1283 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 05. Multigenerational Coresidence

Abstract

Prior research has demonstrated the importance of family status characteristics (i.e. getting married or having children) in structuring the neighborhood attainment of individuals, but we know less about whether living with extended family members enables—or restricts—access to high-SES neighborhoods. Particularly given evidence that high levels of consistency in neighborhood context extend from one generation to the next, multigenerational households may be a site in which individuals find themselves “stuck in place” in a neighborhood, finding their locational attainment trajectories diverge from their peers in non-multigenerational arrangements. Using multiple waves of data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n = 2,969), this research demonstrates that mothers, over the first nine years of their child’s life, generally increase their neighborhood attainment—and, overall, the percentage living in multigenerational households declines. Using multilevel fixed-effects linear regression, I find that multigenerational household structures are significantly associated with higher predicted levels of neighborhood attainment, and this relationship persists even after the inclusion of individual-level SES and demographic characteristics. However, this association grows weaker over time. By the time of the Year 5 and Year 9 surveys, mothers who live with family members have statistically comparable levels of neighborhood SES as their peers in non-multigenerational arrangements. While living in a multigenerational household is associated with higher neighborhood attainment for this sample of disproportionally young and unmarried mothers, this relationship is dependent on time. The results offer insight into how multigenerational households may shape the residential outcomes of individuals, while additionally suggesting that stage in the life course, time, aging, and the co-occurrence of other life events may matter for this process.

Author

• Ellen Whitehead, Rice University