Leaving the parental home in Poland

Kamil Sienkiewicz, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

This study compares trends in the process of leaving parental home before and after the breakdown of the Communist regime in Poland. Because of dramatic changes in Polish society, a significant alteration of the determinants of leaving home is hypothesised. This is examined with data from the Polish retrospective survey, which was carried out in 2001. With the help of piecewise linear event history regressions the explanatory significance of demographic (cohort, number of siblings), social (composition of household) and economic (occupational status of parents, region of residence) factors on the timing of leaving home is investigated. First results show that leaving home in Communist times was highly dependent on marital formation and education enrolment. In general, young people left their home in order to set up new households. Further analyses will examine whether this pattern remains also after the end of Socialism or whether other factors became influential.