Partner relationships, residential relocations and housing in the life course

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Michael Wagner
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Human Geography
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 243070364

• Final Report Year: 2019

Final Report Abstract

Partner relationships, residential relocations and housing are crucial to people’s wellbeing and are known to be connected with each other. The aim of the research project was to gain insight into the interactions between partner relationships on the one hand, and housing and residential relocations on the other, as they develop through people’s life courses. Based on the German Family Panel pairfam, a quantitative dataset that includes relevant information both on housing and partnerships, two research questions were in the focus. First, the project investigated the transition of living apart together partnerships (LAT) to co-residential partnerships. Most relationships start with a “living apart together”–phase during which the partners live in two separate households. But why do some couples establish a joint household while others do not? The results of the study showed that resources seemed to be less relevant for the establishment of a joint household, while the quality of the partnership and also the distance between partners were associated to moving in. The second research question focused on the role of housing conditions in relationship break-ups. The analyses showed that couples who had little income left after housing costs were deducted were more likely to separate than those who had more income left. Another aspect, household density, i.e. the average number of persons per room, seemed to be unrelated to separation after controlling for other factors. However, in more refined analyses, the results indicated that the effect of housing density depended on the income situation: Poor couples were more likely to separate and lowly educated couples were less likely to move to a new dwelling when the couple was living in a dense environment.

Publications

• (2015): Spatial mobility, family dynamics, and housing transitions. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 67(1): 111-135
  Wagner, M. & Mulder, C. H.
  
• (2018): Moving in or breaking up? The Role of Distance in the Development of Romantic Relationships. European Journal of Population, 34(3): 313–336
  Krapf, S.
  
• (2019). "The transition from living apart together to a co-residential partnership." Advances in Life Course Research, 39: 77-86
  Wagner, M., Mulder, C.H., Weiß, B., Krapf, S.