Household structure in the EU

1. Introduction

Household structure is an interesting area for cross-national study for several reasons. Cross-national differences in household structure reflect important differences between societies: in culture and norms; in the cost and availability of housing; in the economic means available to different groups in society; and in social policy, where differences in tax and benefit regimes may lead to radically different patterns of household structure.

Household structure is also interesting in terms of its relationship to a number of

important outcomes. Poverty, for example, is intimately related to household

structure. Poverty rates are calculated on the basis of household equivalent income

(the sum of the incomes of all household members, divided by a factor related to the

number and ages of these same household members) and household composition is

therefore liable to affect both the numerator and the denominator of this calculation.

There is a large literature dealing with the relationship between household

composition and the risk of poverty (Bane and Ellwood 1986), particularly relating to

vulnerable groups: families with children (Bradbury and Jantti 1999); young adults

(Aassve et al 2007) and older people (Rendall 1995). Of course, poverty is not the

only outcome related to household composition: children’s later outcomes, in terms

of educational achievement, future earnings and so on, are affected by the

composition of the households in which they grow up (Boggess 1998; Francesconi et

al. 2005), even after accounting for the effects of poverty associated with certain

household structures, while older people’s health status is also related to household

composition (Hays 2002).

Household structures across the pre-enlargement EU-15 have been widely

documented (Iacovou 2004, Tomassini et al 2004, Andersson 2004, Robson and

Berthoud 2003, and many others). There are also several studies which include a

number of Eastern European countries (Hantrais et al 2006, Hoem et al 2009,

Gerber 2009). These are based on surveys such as the Family and Fertility survey

and the Gender and Generations survey, which are excellent sources of data for this

area of research, but which include only a limited subset of the new EU Member

States. A smaller number of newer studies have used data covering most or all of

the countries of the enlarged European Union: Mandic (2008) deals with home2

leaving, Liefbroer and Fokkema (2008) deal with fertility; while Saraceno (2008)

provides an overview of household structure in a number of different age groups, as

well as some statistics on labour market status and time use. Our paper is based on

the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), which at

the time of writing covers all countries of the expanded European Union except for

Bulgaria, Malta and Romania. Being a general-purpose data set, the EU-SILC does

not allow for such detailed investigation of family formation patterns as some other

data sets. However, its strength lies in the scope of its coverage, which makes it

possible to draw comparisons of many aspects of family structure, over almost the

entire European Union1. We believe that this paper provides a unique resource in

this respect.

We present detailed figures on household structure separately for each country in

the sample. However, we also consider whether there exist groups of countries

which display similar sets of characteristics, and which may be thought of as forming

clusters. Again, there is a well-developed literature in this area relating to the preenlargement

EU-15, and our focus in this paper lies in integrating the new Member

States into this area. In particular, we are interested to uncover the extent to which

the new Member States may be incorporated into existing typologies of family

structure, or whether behaviour in some or all of these countries differs so far from

behaviour elsewhere in Western Europe that it is necessary to think in terms of an

expanded typology.

The section which follows outlines the typologies which have been used to

conceptualise cross-national variations in family structure; we then move on to a

discussion of the data, before presenting our results in Sections 3 to 8.

1.1 Countries and groups of countries

A great deal of comparative research draws on the work of Esping-Andersen (1990

and 1999), whose threefold typology of welfare states consists of: a ‘socialdemocratic’

regime type, characterised by high levels of state support and an

emphasis on the individual rather than the family, typified by the Scandinavian

countries; a ‘conservative’, or ‘corporatist’, regime type, characterised by an

1 Bulgaria, Malta and Romania are not covered here because data for these countries were not

available from the EU-SILC User’s database (UDB) to which Net-SILC members had access.

emphasis on insurance-based benefits providing support for the family rather than

the individual, and typified by the continental European states of France, Germany,

Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg. Esping-Andersen also assigns the Southern

European countries to this group; and a ‘liberal’ regime type, typified by a modest

level of welfare state provision and a reliance on means-tested benefits, exemplified

by the US, and to a lesser extent by the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Several commentators (Leibfried, 1993; Ferrera, 1996; and others) have argued that

the Southern European countries constitute a regime type in themselves, rather than

belonging to the ‘conservative’ group. The arguments on this issue are mixed (Arts

and Gelissen, 2002) with several scholars arguing that structurally, the Southern

welfare states are not dissimilar to those of the ‘conservative’ group of countries.

However, the Southern countries do form an empirically distinct grouping on a wide

range of social and economic indicators, and thus are often defined separately for

the purposes of empirical research.

In fact, it is not clear that a typology based on welfare regimes is the most

appropriate basis on which to study living arrangements and family formation.

Berthoud and Iacovou (2004), in an analysis of Western European family structure,

argue that a typology based on religious affiliation or geography explains family

structure as well or better than one based on welfare regimes, proposing a spectrum

ranging from Northern/Protestant to Southern/Catholic. At one end, the Scandinavian

countries are characterised by small households (particularly single-adult and loneparent

households), early residential independence for young people and extended

residential independence for elderly people; cohabitation as an alternative to

marriage; and an almost complete absence of the extended family. At the other end,

the Southern European countries are characterised by relatively low levels of nonmarital

cohabitation, by extended co-residence between parents and their adult

children, and by elderly people with their adult offspring; this, together with a much

lower incidence of lone-parent families, make for much larger household sizes.

Reher (1998) outlines a typology based on geography and the familialistic legacy of

the Catholic church, in explaining features of family structure across Western

Europe. He describes a “Northern” cluster (Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, the

Low Countries2 and [much of] Germany and Austria), characterised by ‘weak’ family

ties, early home-leaving, and a sense of social rather than familial solidarity with

elderly or weak members of society; and a ‘Southern’ cluster (the Mediterranean

countries, including Portugal) characterised by ‘strong’ family ties, later homeleaving,

and a more family-based sense of solidarity. He notes that Ireland is an

indeterminate case, being geographically Northern, but having much more in

common with the Mediterranean countries in terms of family structures.

Hajnal (1965 and 1982) describes divisions in marriage patterns along a different

East-West axis, with regions east of a line from St Petersburg to Trieste

characterised by near-universal and relatively early marriage, and regions west of

this line characterised by later marriage, with a higher proportion of individuals

remaining unmarried.

In this paper, we use the following fourfold grouping to present our results. The first

group is a ‘Nordic’ cluster consisting of the Scandinavian countries (Sweden,

Denmark and Finland) plus the Netherlands. The second group consists of the preenlargement

countries of North-Western Europe: the United Kingdom, France,

Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Ireland. The third group consists of the

Southern European countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus. The final

group is an ‘Eastern’ group consisting of the other post-2004 members of the EU: the

Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland.

Of course, not all countries fall neatly into one or other of these groups. Where there

are intermediate cases, we have positioned these on the edge of a group. The

Netherlands, for example, is defined by Esping-Andersen (1999) as a member of the

Conservative rather than the Social-Democratic welfare regime type; empirically, it is

in some respects closer to our North-Western cluster than the Nordic cluster, and

has been placed on the boundary between the Nordic and North-Western groups.

Ireland has been placed on the boundary between the North-Western group (where

it belongs geographically) and the Southern group (with which it displays a large

number of common features). And Cyprus has been placed on the boundary

between the Southern group (with which it has clear geographical and cultural

commonalities) and the other new EU members.

2 Member States referred to as ‘Low Countries’ are the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

As will become clear, the Eastern European countries are very far from forming a

homogeneous grouping. This group may be thought of as consisting of three

subgroups: the Czech Republic and Hungary (which have a good deal in common

with the North-Western cluster); Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland (which are extremely

similar to the Southern cluster; and the Baltic Republics (Estonia, Latvia and

Lithuania), which are in some respects most different to any of the pre-enlargement

countries.

2. Data and methodology

2.1 Data

The data used in this paper are taken from the Community Statistics on Income and

Living Conditions (EU-SILC). The EU-SILC is an annual survey which provides micro

data on a wide range of social indicators including income, poverty, social exclusion

and living conditions. The first release of data (relating to the year 2004) includes

information on 13 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland,

France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and Sweden), plus

Norway and Iceland. From 2005, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

joined, along with the rest of the new Member States (Cyprus, Czech Republic,

Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia). Finally, from 2007

onwards, the EU-SILC represents all 27 Member States, and includes Turkey and

Switzerland as non-members alongside Norway and Iceland.

The EU-SILC consists of both cross-sectional and longitudinal elements. In most

countries the sample design takes the form of a rotational panel: the sample is

divided into sub-panels, each sub-panel is retained in the sample for a maximum of

four years, and each year one sub-panel is dropped, to be replaced by a new

replication. In most countries the sample is divided into four rotational groups giving

rise to four-year panels; exceptions are France (nine-year panel); Norway (eight-year

panel) and Luxembourg and Sweden (pure panels). The cross-sectional and

longitudinal data are released separately; data for the analysis in this paper are

taken from version 2007-2 of the cross-sectional SILC.

For the purposes of the analysis in this paper, it is important to note that the data

relate to private households only, and that the sample of respondents is drawn from

members of these households currently resident at the time of data collection. Those

living in institutional settings (hospitals, old people’s homes and student

accommodation) are not included as part of the sample. In all countries, a large

majority of individuals do of course live in private households, but for some groups, a

substantial proportion live in institutional settings - most notably older people,

students, and younger men engaged in military service. It is difficult to quantify the

impact of these phenomena; Appendix II attempts to quantify the problem in relation

to the younger groups.

2.2 Defining relationships between individuals

When analysing people’s living arrangements, it is necessary to establish the

relationships between members of households. Many household-level data sets do

this by means of a household grid, which records the nature of the relationship

between each pair of household members. Unfortunately, the EU-SILC does not

collect this type of information, recording instead only the personal identifiers of each

individual’s spouse or partner, mother and father, where these are resident in the

same household. This enables us to identify which people are living as part of a

couple, and/or with their children or parents; we are also sometimes able to identify

sibling and grandparent relationships, where a third person is present. However,

many relationships cannot be identified – for example, we are generally unable to

distinguish a co-resident sibling or cousin from a friend or lodger.

In addition, although we are able to identify the parent/child relationship, there is a

degree of uncertainty relating to the specific nature of that relationship. In particular,

the role of step-parents is not always clear. It appears that the use of the “mother”

and “father” identifiers has not been entirely consistent, so that in some cases they

have been used exclusively to indicate natural parents, while in others they have

been used to indicate step-parents as well. Given the increase in stepfamilies over

recent decades, this is a particularly unfortunate limitation with the data.

We return to these limitations at various points in the paper, and they should be

borne in mind while interpreting our analysis. Nevertheless, the EU-SILC allows a

great deal of interesting analysis on household structure, and it remains a useful,

and in many respects unique, source of data on this topic.

2.3 Methodology

The analysis in this paper is for the most part descriptive – the figures and tables in

sections 3-6 present means over the populations of interest, and compare them

between countries. All country means are weighted using the cross-sectional weights

supplied with EU-SILC.

For most of the analysis, we also present the mean across the EU-15 “old” Member

States, the mean across the nine “new” Member States represented in these data;

and the average across all countries in the sample. Analysts normally use one of two

methods for computing these cross-country means. One method involves calculating

a simple average of the country means (which gives each country, large or small, the

same weight). Alternatively, countries may be weighted according to their

populations, so that large countries make a larger contribution to cross-country

means. We use this second method: countries are weighted according to their

populations.

In this type of analysis, the issue arises of whether means which appear to be

different are actually different, in a statistical sense. We have computed standard

errors for all the figures we present; however, to present them systematically would

run the risk of adding further complication to our already very full tables. These

standard errors are sufficiently small that wherever we note systematic differences

between groups of countries, these differences are statistically significant; however,

smaller differences between countries in the same group may not be statistically

significant. Full tables, complete with standard errors, can be found in Appendix I.

The majority of the analysis presents means over individuals. In the section on older

people, we present means calculated over people aged 65 and over; in the section

on children, we present means calculated over people aged under 18. In each case,

the population over which we have calculated the means is stated clearly in the

footnotes. In some cases, for example, when dealing with concepts which relate to

the household rather than to the individual, it is more appropriate to calculate means

over households. Where we have done this, it is stated clearly in the text and

footnotes.

Finally, two sets of results in the paper use different analytical approaches. In Table

5.1, we present the ages at which young people make a range of life transitions

 (moving out of the parental home, living with a partner and having children). These

ages may be interpreted as representing the mean ages at which these transitions

are made; however, they are calculated in a slightly different way. The way in which

these calculations are made is explained in the relevant section. Section 8

synthesises the results from the foregoing sections using principal components

analysis. Again, this technique is explained further in that section.

Results are presented in the form of tables, graphs and maps.

3. Household composition

In this section, we discuss household composition at its broadest level. The first

seven columns of Table 3.1 define seven categories of households, and show how

the prevalence of these household types varies across the EU.

The first column relates to single-adult households, where the adult is aged under 65.

These make up 17.6% of households across the EU: this proportion ranges from 6% in

Portugal up to 30% in Denmark, and in general is lowest in the Southern European

countries, plus Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland; rather higher in the rest of Eastern Europe;

higher still in the North-Western group of countries; and highest in the Nordic group.

The distribution of couple-only households where both adults are aged under 65 is

similar (column 3). These households account for 14% of households across the EU,

with the prevalence ranging from only 8% in Slovenia, up to 20% in Finland.

We turn now to households where at least one adult is aged 65 or over. The distribution

of these household types does not follow our country groupings neatly; this is to be

expected, since many factors contribute to household composition among older people:

typical age differences between partners; differences in life expectancy between men

and women; rates of divorce and separation; and the decision as to whether to live with

adult children or other relatives.

Single-adult households among the 65+ age group (column 2) are most common in the

Nordic and North-Western groups of countries (where divorce is relatively common and

where it is relatively unusual for older people to live with children or other relatives) and

least common in the Southern countries (where divorce rates remain low, and where it

is common for older people to live with adult children). Couple-only households where at

least one partner is aged 65 or over (column 4) are most common in the Southern

European countries (low divorce rates) and least common in Eastern Europe (high

divorce rates, and a high incidence of multigenerational households).

Column 5 relates to all other households where children under 18 are not present. In all

countries, the majority of these are households containing both parents and their adult

children; however, in the Southern and Eastern European countries, a substantial

minority of households are composed differently – for example, with a couple plus

another adult of similar age, who may be a sibling. These households are most common

in the Southern European countries plus Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland; they are less

common in the North-Western countries, and much less common in the Nordic cluster,

where they account for only 4% of households in Denmark.

The remaining household types relate to households with children under 18. Those with

a single adult (i.e. lone parent households, column 6) are in a minority everywhere,

being most common in Ireland and the UK (7% and 5% of households respectively), as

well as in Sweden and Finland and the Baltic states. Lone parent households are least

common in Southern Europe plus Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland.

Finally, Column 7 relates to households where two or more adults are living with

children. These are not necessarily two-parent families; some are one-parent

families with adult children as well as minor children; or they may be extended

families with children. These account for 25% of households across the EU-25; while

single-adult families with children are considerably more numerous in the Northern

than the Southern countries, the opposite is true of families with more than one adult,

which are most common in the Southern countries, plus parts of Eastern Europe,

and least common in the Nordic countries.

The final two columns in Table 3.1 are concerned with mean household size.

Column 8 shows mean household size using the individual as the unit of analysis;

Column 9 calculates the mean over households, and thus provides smaller means,

because larger households are only counted once. Mean household sizes are lowest

in the Scandinavian countries, and also low in the North-Western countries, with the

exception of Ireland. The two different methods of calculating mean household sizes

produce slightly different rankings for the largest household sizes. Taking the mean

over households, the largest households are seen in the Southern European

countries, plus Ireland, Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland. If the mean is taken over

individuals, on the other hand, the Eastern European countries are those with the

largest household sizes: this is because the Eastern European countries have more

very large households than the Southern European countries.

4. Children

Children’s living arrangements are of interest to social scientists because of their

relationship to child poverty and to outcomes in later life. We begin this section with a

short discussion of childlessness; we then present statistics on family size and

children’s living arrangements.

Childlessness is increasing throughout the EU, and is contributing to the belowreplacement fertility rates which are evident in many countries, and to an associated level of anxiety related to the dependency ratio (Sobotka 2008). We are not able to calculate rates of childlessness directly from the data we are using here, because while EU-SILC collects information on all children living in respondents’ households, it does not collect information on respondents’ children who are no longer living in the parental home. We therefore estimate a different indicator of childlessness, using a sample of women aged between 33 and 37 years old. These women are old

enough to have had most of the children they are ever going to have; and they are

young enough that only a very small proportion of their children will have left home.

Thus, the proportion of women in this age group who have none of their own children

living with them approximates well to the proportion of this cohort who are childless.

This proportion is lowest in Lithuania at 7%, and generally across the Eastern

European countries plus Ireland. It is highest in Italy and Spain at over 33%, as well

as in a number of Nordic and Northern countries. Thus, although childlessness is

increasing across the Eastern European countries (Philipov and Dorbritz 2003),

childlessness across this cohort has not yet risen to the levels seen elsewhere in

Europe.

Comparing these figures on childlessness with figures on total fertility rates (column

2), there is no clear relationship between the two series. In several countries, the

relationship runs along the lines which one would expect. France, Luxembourg and

Ireland have low levels of childlessness and high TFRs; Italy, Spain and Germany

have high levels of childlessness and low TFRs. However, across Eastern Europe,

levels of childlessness are low, but total fertility rates are also low – this may be

attributed to postponement (and possible permanent reductions) in fertility among

the youngest cohorts. By contrast, in a number of Nordic and Northern countries,

rates of childlessness among the 33-37 age group are very high, while TFRs are

also relatively high (though generally below replacement rate). This has to do with

(a) the postponement of fertility being a less recent phenomenon in these countries,

and (b) the fact that larger families are more common in these countries.

The four columns on the right-hand side of Table 4.1 present figures on the number

of children present in households. These are calculated using the sample of

households where any child under 18 is present; it is important to remember (a) that

these are means over households rather than individuals, and (b) that they do not

include any offspring who are not currently resident in the household, or any

offspring over age 18, even if they are resident in the household. Thus, these figures

will tend to underestimate the proportions of larger families, particularly in those

countries where home-leaving takes place earlier; however, they are indicative of

cross-country variations in family size.

The very largest families are found in Ireland, where 21% of families have three or

more children, and where 5% of families have four or more children. The next largest

families are found in Belgium and the Netherlands, followed by the rest of the Nordic

cluster. The smallest families, based on the percentage of households with three or

more children, are found in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy – in these countries,

under 7% of households have three or more children. These countries, in common

with a number of other Eastern European countries, also have a relatively large

number of households with only one child.

We turn now to a “child’s-eye” view of living arrangements. Declining marriage rates,

rising rates of cohabitation and high rates of union dissolution –trends which have all

been a feature of recent decades - mean children may spend time growing up in a

number of different household types (e.g. lone parent households, cohabiting couple

households). Table 4.2 shows the proportions of children (i.e. those under age 18)

living in four such situations: living with one parent; with two parents who are

cohabiting but not married; and two parents who are married to each other. There

are also a small number of children who are not living with either natural parent; we

include these in the table for completeness.

Because the EU-SILC data do not allow us to distinguish fully between natural

parents, “official” step-parents, and other co-resident partners, we have allocated

children to these categories as follows. The “one parent” category includes all

children living with only one parent, where that parent does not have a co-resident

partner. The “two parents, cohabiting” category includes children living with two

parents who are cohabiting rather than married, as well as children living with one

parent who is cohabiting with a partner who is not defined as the child’s parent. The

“two parents, married” category includes children living with two parents who are

married, as well as children living with one parent who is married to an adult who is

not defined as the child’s parent. Despite these limitations, our findings are similar to

those of (e.g.) Perelli-Harris et al (2009), who cover fewer countries with better data.

Starting with the left-hand column of Table 4.2, we observe that very few children in

any country live with adults who are not recorded as their parents – the figures range

from 0.3% in Luxembourg and the Netherlands to 3.3% in Latvia. Table 4.2 is based

on a sample of all under-18s, and some of those recorded as living with no natural

parents will be teenagers who have moved out of their parents’ home. These

account for about one quarter of those recorded in this column.

The second column of Table 4.2 presents the percentage of children living with a

lone parent. This percentage ranges from 7% or less in Greece, Spain and Cyprus,

up to 24% in Ireland and 27% in Latvia. As we have seen before, there is a high

degree of heterogeneity within the Eastern European group: in the Baltic republics,

the rates of lone parenthood are among the highest in Europe, while in Slovenia,

Slovakia and Poland, they are among the lowest. These figures may usefully be

compared with the figures on lone parent households in Table 3.1: in general, those

countries with a large proportion of lone parent households are the same countries

with a large proportion of children living with a lone parent, and vice versa.

Looking at the percentage of children living with two parents in a cohabiting union

(column 3), this follows a broadly similar pattern, with high proportions of cohabiting

partnerships in the Nordic countries and the Baltic republics, and low proportions in

the Southern European countries plus Slovakia and Poland.

Finally, we look at the percentage of children living with two parents who are

married. Over 90% of children in Greece and Cyprus live with two married parents;

the proportions are also high across the rest of Southern Europe and in Slovakia and

Poland. By contrast, only half of all children live with two married parents in Sweden,

largely thanks to the high proportion whose parents are cohabiting rather than

married; this is also the case in Estonia and Latvia, where high rates of lone

parenthood also play a role.

The final column of Table 4.2 shows the percentages of children who live in

multigenerational households (defined here as households where grandparent(s) as

well as parent(s) are present). There is a clear regional gradient here. Well under 1%

of children in the Nordic cluster live in multigenerational households; 1-5% of

children live in multigenerational households in all other North-Western countries

except for Austria (where the figure is higher); and around 6% of children live in

multigenerational households in Southern European countries (except in Portugal,

where the figure is 11.6%). However, in Eastern Europe, the figures are much

higher: over 10% of children live in multigenerational households in all countries

except the Czech Republic, and this rises to over 20% in Poland and Latvia.

5. Young adults

The transition from childhood to adulthood is characterised by a number of

transitions: from the parental home to living independently; from the single state to

living with a partner; and from childlessness to parenthood. Not all young people

make all these transitions, and some never make any; however, the majority do

make some of these transitions in their twenties or thirties. These transitions have a

direct relationship with young people’s wellbeing and life chances: making these

transitions at an early age is associated with early independence, but may also

(particularly in the case of early home-leaving or early childbearing) be associated

with an increased risk of poverty and disadvantage (Aassve et al. 2007). By contrast,

the very late transitions observed in the Southern European countries, while being

protective against poverty, may delay independence and may also be burdensome

for the parents of young people (Schizzerotto and Gasperoni 2001).

Because some of these transitions are reversible – young people may leave home

and move back in again, or they may live with a partner for a short time before

subsequently splitting up, it is difficult to calculate the mean or median ages at which

these transitions are made by observing the transitions themselves. Instead (taking

home-leaving as an example), we assume that young people who are currently

observed living with their parents have not made the transition out of the parental

home, and we assume that those currently observed as living independently have

made the transition. Of course, we will count some young people who have left home

and come back again as not having yet made the transition; and we will count some

people who are living away from home but for whom the transition is not permanent as

having made the transition. But these errors are likely to cancel each other out. We

then use non-parametric regression techniques to calculate the age at which 50% of

all young people are observed living away from home, or living with a partner or with

children, and consider this analogous to the median age of making the transitions.

Before discussing these figures further, it is worth pointing out that they are based

only on young people living in private households – those living in institutional

settings such as military barracks or university residences will not be sampled. We

believe our results are reasonably robust to these issues: see Appendix II.

The results of these calculations are shown in the first six columns of Table 5.1.

Results are shown for men and women separately, because women tend to make all

these transitions at an earlier age than men.

The first two columns show the age by which half of all young people have left the

parental home. There is a strong divide here between the regional groupings we have

defined: for both men and women, the countries where the transition takes place

earliest are those of the Nordic cluster; the remainder are in the North-Western group

of countries. The transition takes place latest in the Southern European countries, plus

three of the Eastern European countries: Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland; homeleaving

is also relatively late elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The range is very large

indeed: 50% of women have left home by age 20 in Finland and Denmark, while the

corresponding age in many Southern European countries is 27 or 28.

The next two columns show the age by which 50% of young people are living with a

partner. The regional patterns are essentially the same as those for home-leaving,

with partnering taking place relatively early in the Nordic and North-Western

countries, and relatively late across Southern and Eastern Europe. However, the

differences are not so stark in terms of the ages at which the transitions are made. In

the Nordic countries, the median age at partnering is several years higher than the

median age at leaving home, indicating that a prolonged period of living alone is the

norm in these countries; while in the Southern and Eastern European countries, the

mean ages at leaving home and partnering are much closer together, typically

around only one year apart. In the case of Poland and Slovakia, partnership on

average occurs earlier than home-leaving, indicating that it is common for young

adults to remain living with their parents while they also live with a partner.

Finally, we look at the age at which young people live with their own children

(columns 5 and 6 of Table 5.1). For women, this approximates well to the median

age at first birth; for men, the approximation is less good, because some men father

children they do not live with. Here, the pattern of cross-national variation is different,

with the earliest childbearing evident in Cyprus plus the Eastern European countries;

childbearing is relatively late in the Nordic cluster plus some of the North-Western

countries, but latest of all in Italy and Spain, where the median age for a first birth

calculated in this way is 32 for women and 36.5 and 35.5 respectively for men.

The last two columns in Table 5.1 indicate the percentage of men and women aged

between 18 and 28 who live alone in each country. These figures range from only a

few percentage points in Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland, to over 20% in the

Scandinavian countries, and over 30% for both sexes in Denmark. This reflects the

difference in the median ages of leaving home and living with a partner which we

mentioned before: where the gap between these two ages is small, the percentage

of young people living alone is also small, and where the gap between the two ages

is large, this is reflected in a high proportion of young people living alone.

6. Partnerships: cohabitation and marriage

One area in which there are substantial differences between Northern and Southern

European countries is in the prevalence of cohabitation as a substitute for marriage

(Kiernan 1999): non-marital cohabitation is far more common in Northern than in

Southern European countries, particularly in the Nordic countries, where it is very

much the norm among childless young people.

Table 6.1 shows the percentage of opposite-sex partnerships which are reported as

cohabiting rather than marital partnerships in each country, for four age groups:

couples where the woman is in her twenties, her thirties, her forties and her fifties. For

each age group, two sets of figures are reported: the first for partnerships where there

are no co-resident children, and the second for partnerships where the children of one

or both partners are resident in the household. It should be noted that this is not a

perfect indicator of couples who have children – many couples in their fifties, and

some in their forties, will have children who have moved away from the parental home,

and will thus not be counted as having children in the data.

It is clear that there is a substantial age gradient in all countries, with couples in their

twenties substantially more likely to be cohabiting than couples in their forties and

fifties. These figures do not allow us to separate out age effects (sample members in

their twenties have not got married yet, but many will) from cohort effects (people born

in the 1980s are less likely to get married, ever, than people born in the 1950s).

However, some combination of these two effects is leading to a strong gradient:

across the EU as a whole, 63% of childless partnerships among people in their

twenties are cohabiting, compared with just 8% of childless partnerships among those

in their fifties; for partnerships where children are present, the corresponding figures

are 28% for those in their twenties, against 3% for those in their fifties.

A steep north-south gradient is also evident from Table 6.1. In the Nordic countries,

well over half of all childless couples in their twenties and thirties are cohabiting; in the

other Northern European countries, the proportion cohabiting is lower, but still high,

while it is much lower in Southern Europe ranging from 7% of childless couples in their

thirties in Greece to 29% in Portugal. Levels of non-marital cohabitation in the Eastern

European countries are rather heterogeneous, being as low as Southern European

levels in Poland, Slovakia and Lithuania, and comparable with Nordic levels in

Estonia.

There are also strong differences between couples with and without children: in all

countries, for all age groups, couples with children are less likely to cohabit than

couples without children, and in nearly all cases these differences are large. However,

in some countries these differences are systematically larger than in others. Figure 6.1

shows the percentage of cohabiting unions by age group for Sweden and the

Netherlands. For childless couples, the percentage in cohabiting unions is somewhat

higher in Sweden than in the Netherlands, but the numbers are not hugely dissimilar:

91% against 86% for those in their twenties, and 45% versus 38% for those in their

forties. However, when we turn to look at couples with children, much larger

differences emerge: for those in their twenties with children, 69% of Swedish couples

are cohabiting, compared with only 35% in the Netherlands; for people in their forties,

the figures are 29% versus 9%.

This difference between couples with and without children does not follow predictable

regional lines. The difference does tend to be smaller where cohabitation rates are

higher (Sweden, Denmark, Estonia and Slovenia) – but the difference is large in the

Netherlands, Germany and Austria (where cohabitation rates are high) and also in

Cyprus, Greece and Slovakia (where cohabitation rates are low).

7. Older people

Increasing life expectancy and declining fertility mean that the elderly are set to form

a progressively larger proportion of our population over future decades. Older

people’s living arrangements are of key interest to policy-makers: as well as being a

key determinant of older people’s well-being, living arrangements are related to

levels of social expenditure on elderly people.

Table 7.1 shows the proportion of older people living in four situations: alone; without

a partner but with other people; with just a spouse or partner; and with a spouse or

partner plus other people. Before commenting on the table, it is worth noting that

these figures relate to older people in private households: older people in institutions

such as nursing homes are not sampled by the EU-SILC and are not included in this

analysis.

Each set of figures is calculated separately for men and women, and the differences

between the sexes are starker here than elsewhere in this report, because of

differences in life expectancy between men and women, and the consequently

higher proportion of elderly women who are widowed. As we mentioned in Section 3,

the proportion of older people who are living with and without a partner is also

related to the prevalence of divorce and separation in each country.

Two “ideal types” are visible. In the Scandinavian countries plus many Northern

European countries, in particular Germany and France, the predominant living

arrangement for older people is either with a spouse or partner, or alone. Typically,

living in a household with anyone except a spouse or partner accounts for only 10%

or less of older people.

In the Southern European countries, by contrast, it is much more common for older

people to live with people other than a partner: in Spain, 42% of older women and

40% of older men live with others. This type of living arrangement is also relatively

common in the new Member States, particularly Latvia, Slovenia and Poland.

Using EU-SILC data it is not possible to determine the relationships of older people with

the others with whom they live in every case. However, in every country, the large

majority of older people who are observed living with people other than a spouse or

partner, are observed living with at least one of their adult children. These are generally

not the same households which form the group considered in Section 5, of young adults

living with their parents; in most cases, the parents in these households would be too

young to be included in the analysis in this section. The relationship between these

groups is worthy of further analysis. In one sense, the groups are clearly related, in that

they are both composed of adults in the same household as their parents; moreover, they

both tend to be found in the same groups of countries. However, there is a conceptual

difference between the two household types. In the case of adult children living with their

parents, it is the parental generation who may be thought of as providing support for their

children; in the case of elderly people living with their adult children, the locus of support

may often be the other way round, with the younger generation providing not only the

majority of the income, but also an element of care for the parents.

8. Synthesising the differences: Factor analysis

From the figures in the preceding sections, a number of patterns have emerged. One

way in which these may be synthesised is via the use of factor analysis. Principal

components analysis identifies three main factors, which together explain 83% of the

variation between countries in the factors explored. Factor loadings are given in

Table 8.1, with the most important loadings being highlighted via shaded cells. We

identify the first factor as being related to the importance of the extended family: the

variables contributing positively to this factor are young adults living at home; older

people co-resident with their own children, household size, and multigenerational

households. Negatively related to this first factor are young adults living alone and

prime-aged people (i.e., adults aged 35-64) living alone.

If the first factor relates to the extended family, the second factor may be thought of

as relating to the stability of the intimate relationship. The only variables which are

related to this factor are babies living with a lone parent; children living with a lone

parent; prime-aged people who are divorced or separated (and not living with

another partner) and old people living alone. This variable does appear to be related

to the stability of the intimate relationship rather than to notions of social liberalism,

since cohabitation as an alternative to marriage makes no contribution to this factor

at all.

The third factor relates to fertility, with childless women making a negative

contribution, and the number of children per woman making a positive contribution.

Factors 1 and 2 are plotted on Figure 8.1. Six clusters of countries have been

identified. Clearly, there is no unique way of identifying these clusters – clusters

towards the centre of the graph could be combined, as could the two clusters in the

north-east of the graph. First, we note that the “old” EU-15 form the clusters which

might have been expected based on previous research. The social-democratic

countries (including the Netherlands) form one group, scoring low on the extended

family and high on the relationship stability axis. The Southern European countries

score high on both the extended family axis and the relationship stability axis, while

the remaining countries of North-Western Europe occupy an intermediate position on

the extended family axis, and score generally lower on the relationship stability axis.

Ireland occupies a position slightly apart from this group, scoring almost as high on

the extended family axis as the Southern European countries, and low on the

relationship stability axis.

The new Member States are rather heterogeneous. Cyprus falls very close to the

other Southern European countries, which is to be expected given commonalities of

geography, language and culture. Three of the Eastern European countries display

similar, but more extreme, characteristics to the Southern European group, scoring

even higher on the extended family axis and at similar very high levels on the

relationship stability axis. These countries are Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, all of

which have maintained a Catholic tradition through the Communist years (see

Appendix II).

The remaining countries include the three Baltic states – Latvia, Lithuania and

Estonia – and the Czech Republic and Hungary. All these countries occupy a more

“south-easterly” position on the graph than the other countries, scoring high on the

extended family axis, but low on the relationship stability axis. Ireland – previously an

outlier in relation to the other North

the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Figure 8.1: Clusters arising from Principal Components Analysis

Source: EU-SILC Users’ database. See Table 3.1

These results are fairly robust to the particular variables included in the analysis. In

particular, we experimented with different formulations of the variables indicating

divorce, since it was unexpected (to us at least) that the Scandinavian countries,

which score rather high on the relationship

highest divorce rates in the world. In fact, it appears that this factor does not relate to

divorce per se, but rather to the proportion of people living alone followin

separation (and similarly, to the proportion of children living with an unpartnered

parent following divorce or separation). It seems that the Scandinavian countries,

while having high divorce rates, also have relatively high rates of subseque

repartnering, and thus have a much lower proportion of divorced or separated adults

still living alone. We also explored the phenomenon of cohabitation in some detail;

we had been expecting this analysis to generate a factor indicating social liberalism

which would be explained by cohabitation as well as by divorce and lone

North-Western countries – occupies a position close to

blic : stability axis, while they have some of the , 29 following divorce or subsequent liberalism, parenthood. However, we were unable to formulate any indicator of cohabitation which contributed significantly to any such factor; the second factor remained stubbornly as an indicator of partnership breakdown without subsequent repartnering.

9. Conclusions

In this paper, we have mapped a range of indicators of household structure across

the expanded European Union. One of our main aims has been to focus particularly

on the newer Member States of the EU, and to assess the extent to which household

structures in these countries display similarities and differences to household

structures in the “old” EU-15.

Of the new Member States, we find that Cyprus is extremely similar to the Southern

European countries, as might be expected with reference to cultural, geographic and

religious factors. We also find that there is a great deal of heterogeneity among the

Eastern European countries. One group of countries – Slovenia, Slovakia and

Poland – are consistently very similar to the Southern European countries. In these

three countries, the extended family is the norm: young adults leave home late, older

people often live with their adult children, three-generational households are

common, and lone-parent families are relatively uncommon. In terms of mapping

onto a geographical/religious spectrum, Slovenia is the only one of these countries

which is geographically Southern, but all three of these countries remain strongly

Catholic or Orthodox.

The Czech Republic and Hungary, by contrast, have more in common with the

countries of the North-Western cluster. On a large number of indicators, these

countries occupy an intermediate position between the Nordic cluster on the one

hand, and the Southern/Catholic cluster on the other; and in the factor analysis, they

occupy a position close to the other countries of the North-Western cluster –

particularly Ireland.

Of the Eastern European countries, it is in the Baltic countries where family patterns

diverge most widely from the geographical/religious spectrum. These countries

display a number of features in common with the Southern European countries;

chiefly, a large number of large and multigenerational households. However, they

also display a number of striking dissimilarities with the Southern European

countries, particularly in terms of the very large numbers of lone-parent families, and

other single-adult households. In many respects, the Baltic states are very

heterogeneous: for example, non-marital cohabitation is much more common in

Estonia, and very much less common in Lithuania; while lone parenthood and

multigenerational households are more common in Latvia than in the other two Baltic

states.

In this paper we have answered a number of questions, but these in turn raise

further questions. One question, which we raised in Section 7, relates to the nature

of multigenerational households. We have shown that, in a swathe of countries

across Southern and much of Eastern Europe, co-residence between generations is

very common, particularly so in contrast to the Nordic group of countries, where it is

extremely unusual. We have shown that this co-residence is manifested both by

young adults remaining in the parental household, but also by older people living

with their adult children. The question which this raises, and which in this analysis we

have not yet been able to answer, is whether the second household type is merely a

persistent form of the first (i.e. that the young adults whom we see living with their

parents become the same prime-age adults who live with their elderly parents) or

whether the two household types are in fact drawn from different social groups.

Two other questions also arise relating to multigenerational households. The first is

the extent to which they arise as a result of social and cultural preferences (people

actually like living with other family members, and make a positive choice to do this)

as opposed to arising as a result of economic constraints (young people who would

like to leave the parental home but cannot afford to; or older people who cannot

afford to live alone). There is limited evidence to suggest that in Southern European

countries, at least part of young people’s extended residence in the parental home

arises from preferences (Manacorda and Moretti 2006). However, this has not been

systematically addressed for other age groups, or across the new Member States.

Another question which we might pose in relation to multigenerational households is

the degree to which individuals are supporting each other, both economically and in

other ways, by living together. The assumption tends to be that when young adults

are living with their parents, it is the parents who are supporting the young adults;

while when very elderly individuals are living with their adult offspring, it is the elderly

people who are receiving that support. However, this too has not been systematically

tested, particularly in the context of the expanded European Union.

Finally, the picture we have presented has been essentially static: we have not

addressed the important issue of how household structures are evolving (Billari et al

2002). We are unable to answer this question definitively with the cross-sectional

data we have at our disposal; however, we may make inferences based on evidence

drawn from elsewhere. As far as attitudes are concerned, there is some evidence

that these are converging across Europe, with smaller between-country differences

among younger people than their parents. Rosina and Fabroni (2004) find that

although marriage remains the predominant route out of the parental home in Italy,

cohabitation is becoming more prevalent and is set to increase further. Billari (2005)

investigates trends in a range of indicators, concluding that there is limited evidence

of general convergence in attitudes and behaviours, but that on a number of

indicators, convergence is apparent. A further clue towards the evolution of living

patterns lies in the fact that incomes in the new Eastern European Member States

are growing faster than those in the “old” EU-15 (Van Kerm, 2009). To the extent that

behaviour is driven by economic factors – for example, to the extent that intergenerational

co-residence is driven by economic constraints – this suggests that

again, we may observe a degree of convergence in living arrangements between the

countries of the European Union.