Leaving Home over the Recent Cohorts in Italy: Does Economic Vulnerability Matter?

We focus on the process of leaving home among young Italians and aim to discern: a) whether more recent cohorts differ in how they depart from the parental home compared to previous cohorts; b) the role played by personal economic vulnerability in exiting the parental home; c) the extent to which the impact of the latter has changed over generations. Data come from the pooling of two cross-sectional rounds of the survey ‘Families and Social Subjects’ conducted by the Italian National Institute of Statistics in 2009 and 2016. We employ discrete-time event history models, including a competing risks approach. Our findings suggest that more recent cohorts have a lower risk of leaving the parental home for union-related reasons, and a higher risk of departing for non-union-related motives. Economic vulnerability differs in its influence according to the reason for exit. While we observe a clearly negative impact for union-related reasons, the effect varies for non-union related reasons. We furthermore see signs of differences across cohorts relative to this latter set of motives. The results highlight the importance of considering reasons for exit in analyses of departure from the parental home. Our study is also one of the few that explores the role of individual economic vulnerability in a competing risk approach using a cohort perspective.