The Comforts of Home: The Effect of Coresidence with Parents on Young Adults' Residential Mobility

• In Event: 2266 - Family Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 23. Young Adults, Family Relations, and Well-Being

Abstract

This study uses data from the 2005 through 2015 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics’ Transition to Adulthood supplement (PSID-TA) to examine the association between young adults’ parental coresidence and their subsequent likelihood of moving. Compared with young adults who live independently, young adults who coreside with parents are about one-third less likely to make any residential move, and less than half as likely to move to a new state, over the subsequent biennial period. The negative effect of parental coresidence on geographic mobility is stronger for young men than for young women and for Hispanics than for non-Hispanic whites. Increases in the likelihood of coresiding with parents can explain over one-half of the decline in young adults’ odds of making any residential move, and almost one-quarter of the decline in the odds of moving to a different state, between 2005 and 2015. The association between parental coresidence and both residential mobility and interstate migration withstands numerous controls for characteristics of both young adults and their parents that might confound this association. The implications of the pronounced increase in young adults’ proclivity to reside in the parental home for their migration propensities and related behaviors are discussed.

Authors

• Lei Lei, Rutgers University

• Scott J. South, University at Albany - SUNY