Choosing between owning a home and becoming a parent In previous eras, people in the UK were more likely to become parents after they became homeowners. But a recent study has found that the likelihood of owning your own home and becoming a parent has fallen in recent years, with young people just as likely to become parents while living in private rented accommodation.
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he findings of a recent study question the usual assumption that people will own their own home before becoming parents, and suggest that increased uncertainty around housing may be the cause. As a result of property becoming more unaffordable over time, homeownership rates, especially among younger people, have plummeted. The number of people living in private rented accommodation into their late twenties has increased. But private rental tenants have had, and continue to have, very few rights and are subject to upheavals and uncertainty. This may have traditionally put people off starting a family while living in rented accommodation.
mortgages being less accessible to those without substantial deposits, homeownership is a privilege for those who are wealthier, have inheritances, have dual incomes, and are confident in their employment (to be able to obtain and pay their mortgage). With this in mind, many of those who do manage to buy a home might then postpone or forego having children because the costs of homeownership compete with the costs of parenthood.
Because of this, the desire to own one’s own home remains strong across Britain and is often still seen as a preferred setting for parenthood. But with
To examine rates of first births between 1991 and 2016 in Britain, they used longitudinal data from 27 years of the British Household Panel Study (BSPS)
The research team was led by CPC’s Professor Ann Berrington, with Dr Valentina Tocchioni as lead author, and Professor Daniele Vignoli and Dr Agnese Vitali as co-authors.
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