Youth Emancipation and Perceived Job Insecurity of Parents and Children

Abstract

We test whether job insecurity of parents and children affect children’s moving-out decisions. Macroeconomic estimates for 13 European countries over 1983–2004 show that coresidence increases by 1.7 percentage points (PP) following a 10 PP rise in the share of youths perceiving their job to be insecure and declines by 1.1 PP following the same increment in insecurity for older workers. Microeconometric evidence for Italy in the mid-1990s shows that the probability of moving out increases by about half a percentage point for a one-standard-deviation increase in paternal insecurity and by one-third of a percentage point for a one-standard-deviation decrease in children’s insecurity.