1. Parental background and young adults’ homeownership, 1971-2011
Rory Coulter
Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge
GSR/GES Annual Training Conference, London, 18th September 2015

2. Housing and social mobility
Much debate about how the housing system is changing
Particular focus on young adults and falling owner-occupation
Concern about impacts on social mobility
But evidence about this is poor
Important to know more about whether parental background has become increasingly critical for young adults’ homeownership over time
Source:
CLG/NatCen
analysis of the
English Housing
Survey (2015)

3. Covers a long timeframe (historical and individual)
Why is the LS useful?
Covers a long timeframe (historical and individual)
can compare long-term housing ‘outcomes’ across cohorts
Relational: can link people who live(d) together
can examine how housing outcomes later in life vary by attributes of parents as measured during childhood
Large sample with low attrition
can disaggregate by gender and control for a wide range of individual characteristics
greater confidence results not biased by selective dropout

4. Using the LS: An example
RQ: Is parental housing tenure associated with young adults’ homeownership aged 30-34, and has this association changed over time? Approach: Compare ‘Baby Boomers’ with ‘Generation X’
Cohort
Born
Census when (parental home)
Census when (outcome) N
Baby Boom
‘56-’61
1971
1991
26903
Generation X
‘76-’81
2011
19665

5. Descriptive results

6. Explanations for changing odds ratios?
1. Means and opportunity
Family support increasingly necessary for entering home ownership, and parents who own tend to have access to greater resources (from equity and work)
2. Changing composition of social tenants
Social renters became an increasingly disadvantaged group as homeownership expanded (Right to Buy)
3. Changes in young people’s educational and working lives
Children from less advantaged backgrounds do less well in education and work, and how family background shapes these attainments may have changed over time
We must examine whether tenure background still matters when controlling for a range of other parental attributes, individual characteristics and contextual variables (eg. house prices)

7. Model estimates

8. Summary and conclusions
Intergenerational associations in homeownership are strong and persistent
Consequences for wealth distribution and social mobility
The negative association between parental tenancy and child homeownership has strengthened over time
BUT this trend can be (mostly) explained by controlling for (a) other parental attributes, (b) young adult characteristics and (c) contextual conditions
The LS can tell us much about long-term trends in social mobility and how these are linked to the housing system

9. 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.