Life-course Experience and Housing Quality

This paper reports the extent to which the effects of such life-course experiences as partnership formation, the transition to parenthood, divorce and unemployment on housing quality persist over the life course. Using retrospective survey data for the Netherlands and ordered logit analysis, the effects on housing quality of life-course experiences, their timing, and their persistence over the life-course were estimated. Housing quality was measured by a 4-category variable based on tenure and the size of a dwelling. The results indicate that several lifecourse experiences have a lasting effect on housing quality, although most effects become weaker with increasing age or duration since the experience.