LEAVING THE PARENTAL HOME

Somali immigrants were the earliest to leave home, as figure 1 shows. During the first years after turning 18, Danes, Turkish immigrants and Turkish descendants showed similar survival probabilities. After three years, at the age of 21, this changed as Danes became quicker to leave home. After seven years, Danes and Somalis had identical survival curves with less than 10% still living at home compared with over 25% of Turks. The age-related home-leaving patterns of Turkish immigrants and Turkish de-scendants were nearly identical. This was mirrored by the similar hazard ratios (HR) (see Table 3).

10. Cohabitating with a partner is defined as a couple consisting of a male and a female, with or without children, with an age difference of less than 15 years, living in a dwelling with no other adults registered at the address (apart from adult children, if any) and where the records in the registers do not indicate close kinship.

11. Except information on employment which refers to November the year before leaving home, as register data for employment are from November.

Figure 1: Survival rates of Somali immigrants, Turkish immigrants, Turkish descendants and Danes, years since the year of turning 18

Figure 1: Survival rates of Somali immigrants, Turkish immigrants, Turkish descendants and Danes, years 

A Cox regression with ethnic group as the only covariate confirmed the major ences in the age of home-leaving of Somalis, Danes and Turks (Table 3). The differ-ences between the ethnic groups persisted in models including covariates. This indi-cates the existence of different age norms regarding the timing of home-leaving and could support the notion by Billari & Liefbroer (2007) that social influence operates at the level of social networks as opposed to the level of society.

Table 3: Results from the Cox regression for ethnic group, without and with covariates (1986-2006)Table 3: Results from the Cox regression for ethnic group, without and with covariates (1986‐2006) 

Variables  Model A

- = reference category. **** p < 0.0001. N=115,937 

The covariates included in model B are the same as in the model shown below.

As argued previously, three groups of variables were expected to influence the process of leaving the parental home. These were included in the Cox regression models for leaving home for the four ethnic groups¹² (Table 4).

12. The following variables were tested but did not have an effect: ‘Retired incl. Disability for the individual’, Family year of immigration and individual year of immigration.

Indicator variables for missing values or irrelevant values of the covariates (e.g. living in an unidentified type of housing) have been included in the analyses but are not reported.

THE INDIVIDUAL

The hazard for leaving home for women was much higher for Turks and Danes, con-firming that women leave home earlier than men. For female Turkish immigrants, the HR was more than double that of males. Interestingly, female Somali immigrants had a lower hazard for leaving home compared to men. This indicates different cultural patterns between Somalis and Turks. For Turks, the cohort 1974-79 had a higher haz-ard for leaving home than the younger cohort, indicating earlier home-leaving in the older cohort. The hazard was near identical for Turkish immigrants and descendants.

With respect to civil status, Turkish descendants and immigrants had a higher hazard for leaving home if they were married. This supports hypothesis H2 that for Turks marriage and home-leaving is connected. The HR was almost identical for descendants and immigrants, thus supporting hypothesis H3Alt that Turkish descendants are simi-lar to Turkish immigrants in their pattern for leaving home. In contrast, married Danes had a lower hazard for leaving home than unmarried Danes. This might be a conse-quence of generationally shared households. An educational level of upper secondary or further education made Danes and Turks more likely to leave home. For Somalis, the HR for leaving home was lower for vocational training than for basic schooling.

Again, ethnic differences can be identified. The employment situation of the individual primarily had an impact if the home-leaver was retired, which for young people can only be for health reasons. In that case, they were much less likely to leave home, as could be expected. The limited effect of employment situation could be a consequence of the Danish welfare support, allowing young adults to leave home early, whether in employment or not (Furstenberg, 2010; Mulder et al, 2002). For Somalis and Danes, being unemployed as opposed to being in employment even sped up home-leaving.

Individual income of the home-leaver showed a clear and similar pattern across the groups: the hazard for leaving home was higher if the home-leaver had an income above the lowest category. Income thus seems to facilitate home-leaving, making it financially possible to live independently from parents.

THE PARENTAL FAMILY

If the household consisted of more than five people, the hazard for leaving home was higher. A larger household size thus seemed to function as a push factor. Living with one parent as opposed to both parents led to a higher hazard for leaving home. This is in line with previous research which showed that broken parental households leads to earlier home-leaving (Mitchell, 2000; Furstenberg, 2010, Zorlu & Mulder, 2011). This goes for all groups with the exception that the HR of Turkish descendants and immi-grants for leaving home was unaffected if the home-leaver lived with his/her mother.

The employment situation of the parental family was highly influential as well. With a few exceptions, the hazard of leaving home was higher, if the household head was anything else than in employment. This indicates that parental unemployment and re-tirement can work as a push factor. A higher household income decreased the hazard for leaving home for Turks and Danes. Thus, it seems that parental resources were

not used as a means to speeding up the home-leaving process, contrary to what other studies have found (Mulder et al, 2002). Instead it could be perceived as an indicator of the feathered nest effect: higher parental income leads to better housing condi-tions which in turn delays home-leaving. For Somalis on the other hand, a household income of EUR 46,900-67,000 heightened the HR for leaving home indicating that for this group parental income might be used to speed up the home-leaving process.

THE PARENTAL HOUSING UNIT

For Danes, less than one room per person in the household heightened the hazard of home-leaving. For Turks and Somalis, this was not the case. One reason could be that the housing norms of the four groups differ in relation to what is perceived as crowdedness and appropriate dwelling size, e.g. whether each child should have a separate bedroom. For Turks, another reason could be that large households indicate traditional families with more traditional attitudes towards marriage. With respect to tenure, living in owner-occupied housing decreased the hazard for leaving home. This could be in line with the idea of a feathered nest effect: owner-occupied housing is in general of a higher quality, of a bigger size and the vast majority of detached and semi-detached housing is owner-occupied. The effect of owner-occupation is insignif-icant for Somalis, most likely due to the very low number of owner-occupiers within this group. Living outside Copenhagen led to a higher hazard for home-leaving for all groups, in accordance with the expected effect of having to move to attend education.

As the prices are high in Copenhagen and availability of housing is limited, those who can stay at home and attend studies might choose to do so as opposed to paying high prices and/or living on the outskirts of Copenhagen.

Table 4: Results from separate Cox regression models, with covariates (1986-2006)Table 4: Results from separate Cox regression models, with covariates (1986‐2006) 

- = reference category; x = time-independent variables; z(t) = time-dependent variables.

N=115,937