Leaving the parental home is a milestone in young people's transition to adulthood. The timing of leaving home varies greatly across European countries; however, evidence on the association between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and the age at leaving home in a comparative perspective is mixed, and subnational variation has received little attention. The module on the timing of life events included in Round 3 (2006) and 9 (2018) of the European Social Survey offers the opportunity to study how parental SES is associated with the age at leaving home, and how this association varies at the national and regional level for a sample of respondents born between the 1950s and the 1980s in 175 regions across 29 European countries. Results from three‐level linear regression models indicate that a high parental SES postpones women's age at leaving home in most Southern and Eastern European countries, where state support to young people is low and family ties are strong, whereas the association between parental SES and the age at leaving home is less clear‐cut in Western and Nordic countries. Between‐country variation in the association between parental SES and the age at home‐leaving prevails over within‐country variation, suggesting that the role of the parental background is country‐specific and that other unobserved factors may explain within‐country heterogeneity.

Travel patterns have dramatically changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tourism has been both a vector and a victim of the disease. This paper explores the pandemic’s impact on rural tourism, using the theoretical framework of the “mobilities turn” to investigate issues of corporeal and communicative travel found between the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 874 guests visiting the Italian region of South Tyrol, where rural tourism is the norm, identified different patterns of physical travel and approaches to collecting on-site information on COVID-19. Results from a principal component analysis (PCA) and a cluster analysis highlighted at least two different approaches from visitors to the region: the first is more cautious, mostly practiced by domestic tourists, with limited mobility on-site, coupled with a need for information; the second is instead a more adventurous approach, with higher on-site mobility, more use of sustainable forms of transport and less interest in data evidence on COVID-19. Implications for rural tourism and its future are discussed. The hypothesis of an inverse relationship between corporeal and communicative travel needs further exploration in future research.

Volume 51 - Article 23 | Pages 723–762

Air pollution is detrimental to a person’s overall quality of life, not only harming physical health, but also potentially undermining wellbeing across various aspects of daily living. The aim of this study is to investigate whether air quality is associated with individual subjective wellbeing, based on multiple measurements of wellbeing encompassing life evaluation and sense of purpose and meaning, using data at the regional and country level in Europe. This study is based on the sixth round of the European Social Survey conducted in 2012, linked to data on air pollution—measured by PM10 levels—across 3825 stations gathered from air quality reports by the European Environment Agency. Using multilevel regression models and controlling for an array of confounders at the individual level, we find no association between the regional-level intensity of air pollution and individuals’ subjective wellbeing. Rather, this association depends on the area of residence: individuals living in the countryside experience a noticeable decrease in subjective wellbeing when PM10 concentration increases, while for individuals living in urban areas subjective wellbeing tends to increase. No association between PM10 and subjective wellbeing is observed in small cities. Future studies in this emerging literature on pollution and individuals’ wellbeing should consider the complex linkages between place of residence, amenities, and pollution.

Ideations and intentions are important precursors of actual behaviour but are still understudied in the literature on the transition to adulthood. This article provides a descriptive overview of ideations and intentions about the timing of four key events in the transition to adulthood – exit from the parental home, cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood – using cross-national representative data for 33 European countries from the Generations and Gender Survey and European Social Survey. Results show that ideations and intentions about the transition to adulthood are, like behaviours, gendered and display distinctive country differences. The analysis of age-graded ideations and intentions suggests a mismatch between the ideal and actual ages at which key events occur during the transition to adulthood. Young people aged 18 to 34 in Europe consider it ideal to start a non-marital cohabitation, marry, and become parents during their 20s but, on average, experience these events later than their ideal timeline. This mismatch is particularly pronounced among men and for the events of marriage and parenthood.

Living together marks an important step in the progression of intimate partner relationships. While existing literature highlights the relevance of both partners’ economic characteristics for union formation, it remains unclear whether both partners’ economic characteristics are equally linked to the transition to co-residence, whether one partner’s traits matter more, and how this varies by gender. We address these gaps by examining how the economic characteristics of women and men in non-residential relationships relate to their transition to co-residence. Using 13 waves (2008–2021) of the German Family Panel pairfam and Cox proportional hazards model, we analyse 7165 non-residential relationships, capturing dyadic data on partners’ employment status, contract type, and income. Our findings show that economic factors significantly influence the likelihood of moving in together. Couples with two employed partners are most likely to move in together, while gender plays a role when only one partner works—this transition being more likely when the man is employed. Among employed individuals, higher income increases the probability of moving in together for both men and women. Additionally, temporary employment raises the likelihood of starting a co-residence exclusively for women. Overall, results suggest that men’s employment status plays a pivotal role in this transition and that union formation is socially stratified among young adults, reinforcing gender inequalities in partnership dynamics.