Life Course Events and Residential Change: Unpacking Age Effects on the Probability of Moving

PWP-CCPR-2012-018

Abstract

We know that life course events, especially divorce and separation, trigger residential moves, but we know less about how these and other life course events intersect with how far people move and changes to accessing labor markets. This research uses data from the Household, Housing and Income Dynamics Survey in Australia (HILDA) to model a set of life course events and their intersection with the distance of move. I examine “good” life events, marriage and new births, not so good events, divorce, separation and widowhood, and the unexpected event of job loss and their outcomes in the housing market. For the decision to move the models partly parallel other studies of life course events and their role in the mobility decision, but the results provide entirely new results about how age and life course events intersect. I suggest that age is merely acting as proxy for complicated life course intersections with moving. The disruption of divorce and separation, as expected, increase the probability of moving but with different marginal effects over distance. Households move in response to these life events but they are much less likely to change metropolitan locations.