1. Parental background and young adults’ housing outcomes
Rory Coulter, University of Cambridge
Population Change and Housing across the Life Course
University of St Andrews, 16/06/15

2. Introduction Young adults’ housing a theme in election campaigns
Help to Buy ISAs in the 2015 Budget
Ed Miliband’s ‘Venezuelan style’ rent controls
Idea of Generation Rent gaining purchase as increasing concentration of young HH in PRS
Also boomerang children, parental safety nets…
Linked to various factors:
Economics of owning and renting
Changing life courses

3. Introduction
Key issue is implication of trends for current and future inequalities
Much focus on inequalities between cohorts
However, increasing concern about intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage in housing
Eg. parental assistance thought to be increasingly significant for transitions to owner-occupation

4. Introduction
How are young adults’ housing outcomes influenced by the attributes of their parents, and have these effects changed over time?
Focus on parental class and tenure effects
Examine role of changing life courses and contextual conditions (house prices, tenure mix, unemployment)
Take ‘social mobility’ approach, concentrating on absolute and relative odds of housing outcomes

5. Data and methods ONS Longitudinal Study 1971-2011
1% sample of population of England and Wales
Link parental attributes aged to housing ‘outcome’ aged 30-34
Three cohorts of young adults
Cohort
Birth years
Tracked
1. Baby Boomers (BB)
1971, 1981, 1991
2. Post Boomers (PB)
1981, 1991, 2001
3. Generation X (GX)
1991, 2001, 2011

6. Data and methods Dependent variable has four categories:
owner-occupation
social tenancy (LA or HA)
private tenancy
sharing the dwelling
Parental class coded as NS-SeC (Sturgis & Buscha)
Compare NS-SeC 1-2 with 5-7
Bivariate analysis of odds and ORs of each outcome, then multinomial models

7. Results I: Odds
Source: ONS LS
(own analysis).

8. Results I: Odds
Source: ONS LS
(own analysis).

9. Results I: Odds
Source: ONS LS (own analysis).

10. Results I: Odds
Source: ONS LS (own analysis).

11. Results I: Odds
Source: ONS LS (own analysis).

12. Results I: Odds
Source: ONS LS (own analysis).

13. Results 3: Average Marginal Effects (Men)
Variables
Baby Boomers
Post Boomers
Generation X OO ST SH
Parent NS-SeC 5-7 (ref=1-2)
-0.038
0.025
0.012
-0.035
0.017
0.029
-0.029
0.021
Parent s.tenant
(ref=owner)
-0.054
0.051
0.011
-0.077
0.018
-0.085
-0.006
Higher degree (ref=no degree)
0.085
-0.058
-0.012
0.060
-0.046
-0.013
-0.033
-0.032
NS-SeC 5-7
(ref=1-2)
-0.188
0.117
0.056
-0.136
0.062
0.057
-0.147
0.070
Regional house price (£10,000)
-0.014
0.008
0.005
0.002
0.004
-0.003
0.001
Source: ONS LS (own analysis) Notes: Bold indicates p<0.05.

14. Results 3: Average Marginal Effects (Women)
Variables
Baby Boomers
Post Boomers
Generation X OO ST SH
Parent NS-SeC 5-7 (ref= 1-2)
-0.028
0.030
0.013
-0.046
0.034
0.017
-0.048
0.022
0.037
Parent s.tenant (ref=owner)
-0.065
0.050
0.011
-0.081
0.078
0.005
-0.096
0.070
-0.008
Higher degree (ref=no degree)
0.081
-0.078
0.002
0.038
-0.039
-0.007
0.093
-0.067
-0.010
NS-SeC 5-7
(ref=1-2)
-0.165
0.136
0.031
-0.137
0.096
0.029
-0.146
0.073
0.027
Regional house price (£10,000)
-0.019
0.003
-0.005
0.004
0.001
Source: ONS LS (own analysis) Notes: Bold indicates p<0.05.

15. Conclusions
Housing position aged associated with parental class and tenure position in all cohorts
Lower ownership, higher renting/sharing (for men) if parent(s) tenants or with a less advantaged class position
Net of life course trajectories and contextual variables
Stronger negative association between parental tenancy and ownership in more recent cohorts
Key issue is timing: Do patterns persist or ‘wear off’?
Possible role of unobserved parental factors potentially testable with panel data

16. Acknowledgements
This research is supported by an Economic and Social Research Council Future Research Leaders award [ES/L /1]. Additional financial support has been provided by the Isaac Newton Trust.
The permission of the Office for National Statistics to use the Longitudinal Study is gratefully acknowledged, as is the help provided by staff of the Centre for Longitudinal Study Information & User Support (CeLSIUS). CeLSIUS is supported by the ESRC Census of Population Programme under project ES/K000365/1. I bear sole responsibility for all analyses and interpretations of the data.
Census output is Crown copyright and is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

17. Acknowledgements
The derivation of 1971 and 1981 NS-SEC & Goldthorpe classes is provided in Bukodi and Neuburger (2009) “Data Note. Job and occupational histories for the NSHD 1946 Birth Cohort” as part of the ESRC Gender Network Grant, Project 1 ‘Changing occupational careers of men and women’, Reference: RES
The code was kindly provided by Erzsebet Bukodi and adapted for use in the LS by Franz Buscha and Patrick Sturgis as part of the ESRC grant ‘Inter-cohort Trends in Intergenerational Mobility in England and Wales: income, status, and class (InTIME)’ [ES/K003259/1].