Young Adulthood: Aspirations and realities for living and learning in the 21st Century

This research project sets out to further our understanding of how young adults' experience of education and employment relate to their ambitions and success in achieving residential independence and appropriate housing in the UK, and how these relationships are modified by gender and, for the first time, ethnicity. Recent years have been characterised by significant economic, social and cultural change, with contemporary young adults' transitions to adulthood in the UK altered by further deterioration of the youth labour market, expansion of higher education, increased unaffordability of housing, rapidly changing family contexts within which individuals are brought up and increased diversity of experience associated with second and third generation migrant groups. In this context, we need to re-develop our understanding of the contemporary transition to adulthood independence.

Past research has tended to polarise youth into those who experience so-called fast track transitions to adulthood, for example, through early, often chaotic, home leaving and those, often more advantaged youth, who are characterised by slow track transitions including delayed partnership and parenthood. Such a characterisation is too simplistic, however, and tends to ignore the moderating roles of gender and ethnicity. Furthermore, existing research, policy attention and media interest has tended to be focused either on "problematic groups" such as young parents or those not in employment, education or training (NEETs), or on the weakening jobs market for recent graduates and the perceived trend for graduates to increasingly move back into the parental home on completing their studies. This research seeks to provide a holistic overview of the experience of the full range of young people to deliver a comprehensive conceptualisation of young people's housing careers.

The proposed work is situated at the confluence of a number of fields of research including demographic transitions to adulthood; sociological debates concerning the roles of choice and constraint in pathways to adulthood; the impact of social policy on young adult's housing careers and inter-generational support between parents and their adult children. We will work in an interdisciplinary manner bringing together experts on youth transitions from the fields of sociology, education and social demography to deliver high impact policy and practitioner relevant research. The project will contribute to capacity building in advanced quantitative methods through the appointment of a Research Fellow and the up-skilling of the Co-I who is currently an expert in qualitative methods. Under the guidance of the PI, who is an expert in longitudinal methods, both the Research Fellow and Co-I will enhance their skills in the analysis of large and complex longitudinal datasets.

The research involves exploitation of several key data resources: UKHLS, EHS and HESA statistics. These data will enable us to answer the following interrelated research questions.
1) How do young adult's living arrangements vary according to their profiles of education, employment and parenthood?
2) What are the determinants of leaving home and boomeranging back into the parental home?
3) What factors are associated with leaving home for Higher Education (HE)?
4) What factors are associated with young peoples' aspirations for education and residential independence? How do these aspirations interrelate?
For each of these questions we are particularly interested in how these relationships differ by gender and ethnicity.
We will use this empirical evidence to put forward a new conceptualisation of young adults' housing careers and identify a series of implications for demographic projections and social policy. As a result of our existing engagement with Government policy makers and stakeholders we are confident that this research will have significant impact on both academic and non-academic users.

This research will provide impact in a number of the ESRC's key areas for priority including "Influencing Behaviour and Informing Interventions". The project investigates attitudes and aspirations among different population subgroups and examines the family background, individual and wider societal factors associated with wellbeing in the context of attaining residential independence and suitable housing.

As a result of our user engagement in the design of the proposed research project we are confident that the project outputs will have significant impact beyond academia. In preparing the proposal we have consulted with Government analysts and policy makers e.g. the Family Demography Unit at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Housing Policy Unit at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). We also consulted stakeholders who are concerned with increased social inequality and the difficulties faced by many young adults in accessing suitable employment and housing e.g. Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and the Resolution Foundation (RF). We believe the project could help increase the effectiveness of public policy in the UK and will provide information which will be of economic benefit to the private sector, particularly the housing industry.

We have identified the following groups as some of the beneficiaries:
a) Government analysts in ONS responsible for making marital status and fertility projections. As noted in their letter for support, new insights into young people's aspirations for the timing of leaving home and family formation will be useful inputs into projections of future trends in family formation.
b) Government analysts in the Department for Communities and Local Government responsible for making future housing projections. Household projections are made by applying household representative rates to each age- and marital status- specific group. It is important therefore to have robust data on the increased propensity of young adults to share accommodation, rather than say live alone, since this decline in household representative rates has a significant implication for the overall number of houses required.
c) The Housing Industry will benefit from up to date knowledge about patterns in young adults' living arrangements, their aspirations for home ownership and recent experience with mortgage applications.
d) Government policy makers who are required to evaluate the impact of changes in housing benefit provision - specifically the increase in the age threshold from age 25 to age 35 in the amount of housing benefit awarded. Single, young adults in receipt of housing benefit only receive a level of housing benefit equivalent to the level required to rent a room in shared accommodation. The recent increase in the age group affected by this policy up to those aged 34 has been controversial and there is a distinct lack of empirical knowledge e.g. concerning the size and characteristics of the population likely to be affected by this change in policy. In particular, DWP are keen to find out how many single men are in fact non-resident fathers. For these men, the cap in housing benefit to the level for shared accommodation is likely to restrict their ability to have their children to stay overnight and hence effectively co-parent.
e) A number of stakeholder organisations including JRF, RF, and Crisis are engaged in debates concerning the increased difficulties faced, particularly by young single adults, in accessing suitable housing. These organisations are keen to incorporate high quality academic research such as being proposed here as evidence to support their policy proposals. In our discussions they have asked in particular for further information on groups who hitherto have not been the focus of research - including the housing careers of BME young adults, non-resident parents, and those young adults not on benefits but whose wages and career prospects preclude home ownership.