Why Spanish youngsters remain at the parental home for so long?

Pau Miret-Gamundi, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

According to European Union Household Panel data, Spain is the country where young people remain for longer at parental home. Our first hypothesis explain that the opportunity cost of delaying a promising professional career for higher educated women lead them to a parallel delaying in family formation patterns. Nevertheless, these effects from educational attainment can have an effect just on women who are in the labour market. We pool together data from two sources: the 1991 Spanish Sociodemographic Survey (a retrospective survey that draw the evolution from 1940 to 1990) and the Spanish Labour Force Survey (used cross-sectional from 1990 to 2003). As a depended variable, we will consider four complementary living situations, that is, 1) non-partnered living with parents, 2) partnered and living independently from parents, 3) neither partnered nor living with parents and 4) both partnered and living with parents. Birth-cohort, educational attainment and labour status are the independent variables.