Home-Leaving among Young Adults: Family Structure and the Celtic Tiger

Emily Wiemers, University of California, Los Angeles

This paper uses data from the large economic expansion in Ireland during the 1990s to examine how home-leaving decisions of young adults respond to economic growth. I examine whether young adults respond to increased economic opportunities by leaving home to establish independent households or to invest in higher education. Using economic growth that affects Ireland as a whole is not particularly useful for identifying the effects of economic expansion on home-leaving behavior because the effects of time and economic growth are confounded. However, much of the economic expansion in Ireland was driven by foreign direct investment in the form of large factories. These factories opened at different times and in different locations. I use the geographic and time-series variation in factory openings in to identify the effect of economic growth on home-leaving decisions.