Working papers

Fleeing the Crowded Nest: Siblings and Leaving the Parental Home

with Adriano De Falco and Elia Moracci

We investigate whether the decision of young adults on when to leave the parental home is influenced by the number of siblings they have, in the context of European countries over the last seventy years. Exploiting random variation in sibship size induced by twin births, we identify the causal effect of having an extra sibling on the timing of home-leaving. We find that one additional sibling speeds up the transition to independent living by roughly six months and provide evidence that our results stem from a decrease in the value of living with parents. We interpret our results as the combination of a channel that decreases the value of co-residence and a channel that increases the value of early home-leaving.

Work in progress

Re-examining the property price premia around ‘good’ schools

with Ellen Greaves