Residential choice and attitudes towards family and work

Marjolein Blaauboer, University of Amsterdam
Clara H. Mulder, University of Amsterdam

Research on many kinds of human behaviour has shown that aspects as life course careers, resources and restrictions, and demographic as well as socio-economic characteristics, can only partially explain the differences in behaviour. Individuals with similar characteristics show different behaviour. Therefore, more and more researchers are including values and attitudes in their theoretical framework. In this paper a theoretical framework in which values and attitudes are linked to residential choice will be set up. Data from the first and second wave of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS; Dykstra et al, 2005) will be used to examine the changes in attitudes towards work and family after relocation. This panel study includes information on a broad range of socio-economic, demographic and family and household characteristics. Concerning the relocation, we study the changes in housing type, housing tenure and degree of urbanization. Regarding attitudes, an extensive measurement of (the changes in) both work and family values is available. The focus will not be on the nuclear family only but on the wider family context as well, including siblings, children en parents living outside the household. Attitudes on work and family are chosen because they can be considered to be competing life course careers when it comes to residential choices. The methods used are binomial and multinomial logistic regression analyses. Between the first and second wave, 1050 individuals moved once and another 145 individuals moved more than once. Preliminary analyses, in which only the first wave of the NKPS data is used, show that there is an association between attitudes towards work and family and the current type and place of residence. By using the data from the second wave it will become possible to make inferences about the causal relationship between attitudes toward family and work and residential choice.