Separation as an Accelerator of Housing Inequalities: Parents’ and Children’s Post-Separation Housing Careers in Sweden

Kirsten van Houdt , Stockholm University

Parents who separate face the challenge of an urgent change in housing needs: Both parents have their own individual needs – e.g., proximity to work and friends – as well as the common need to provide stability for their children and to stay involved – e.g., proximity to school and space for the children. The urgency and specificity of the needs might be particularly problematic for parents with few financial resources, especially on today’s competitive housing market. As a result, children with less advantaged parents might experience a more disruptive change in housing (e.g., over a longer distance, a stronger downgrade in terms of space and neighborhood) than their counterparts whose parents have more to spend. The aim of this study is to show whether and to what extent inequalities in financial resources amplify the negative consequences of parental separation for housing careers. It considers distance of moving, distance between parents, frequency of moving, quality of housing, and neighborhood characteristics by analyzing Swedish administrative data on the housing careers of separated parents with young children (N ? 30,000) between 2010 and 2019 – pre- and post-separation – and compare parents with different levels of income and wealth. The first results suggest that parents with less financial resources move over longer distances (especially mothers), and move further apart than their more advantaged counterparts. No such differences exist among non-separated parents. This indicates that financial resources buffer the impact of a separation on housing careers and consequently, children’s lives.

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 Presented in Session 64. Flash Session: International and Internal Mobility