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Diverse Family Forms Across Europe

November 20, 2002

"British men in their mid-twenties are nearly five times as likely as Italian men to be living with a partner."

New ESRC research highlights the diversity of family forms across the European Union. The study, specially commissioned for the ESRC's sixth national social science conference, was prepared by Professor Richard Berthoud and Dr Maria Iacovou, of Essex University's Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER). The research is based principally on analysis of a survey of 73,000 households across the EU. Its findings include:

* In Finland, half of all young men have left the parental home before age 22. But in Italy, almost half of all men are still living with their parents by age 30. In the UK, the 'half-way' mark for men leaving home is 23.5.

* In all countries, women leave home earlier than men.

* Ireland has the largest households, with four people on average. In the UK, average household size is 2.8 and Sweden has the smallest households with an average size of 2.2.

* Between the ages of 23 and 27, only nine per cent of Italian men are in partnerships, while 42 per cent of men in the UK have a partner: thus, British men are nearly five times as likely as Italian men to be living in a partnership in their mid-twenties.

* The most delayed fertility is in the Netherlands and Italy (with only around half of women in these countries having had a child by age 30), while the earliest fertility is in the UK and Austria (where half of all women are mothers by age 27). Indeed, early fertility in the UK is the highest in Europe, not just in the teenage years, but throughout the early twenties.

* Annual teen birth rates range from 6 per 1000 women in the Netherlands up to 30 per 1,000 women in the UK.

* In the southern countries, 33 per cent of women over age 65 live with one or more of their children; in the north/central group only 10 per cent live with a child; and in the Nordic countries, only three per cent live in the same house as one of their children.

* Older people may move in with their adult children in order to be cared for by their children. But cohabitation between generations is not simply a case of the younger generation caring for their elderly parents: the older generation also helps the younger generation by providing childcare. There is far more reciprocity in such arrangements where the elderly co-resident is female: older men receive just as much care as older women, but they provide very little childcare.

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

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