The Transition to Motherhood among British Young Women: Does housing tenure play a role?

A positive link between homeownership and fertility is usually presumed. Nevertheless, couples’ preferences to become homeowners before having their first child has been undermined by the dramatic changes in the UK housing market over recent decades, causing a marked fall in homeownership rates among young adults. Using prospective longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (1991- 2008) and the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Survey (2009-2016), and applying multilevel discrete-time event-history techniques, we investigate whether and how the link between housing tenure and motherhood has changed over recent decades in Britain, and whether the link is moderated by local area characteristics including housing markets.