Boomerang kids: labor market dynamics and moving back home

This paper examines the relationship between the dynamics of parent-youth living arrangements and labor market outcomes for youths who do not go to college in the United States. The data come from a newly constructed panel data set based on retrospective monthly coresidence questions in the NLSY97. This is the first data set containing information on the labor market circumstances of youths at the time of movements in and out of the parental home. Based on estimates from duration models that allow for unobserved heterogeneity, I find that moving from employment to non-employment increases the hazard of moving back home in a given month by 64% for males and 71% for females. These results suggest that labor market factors play an important role in determining the dynamics of parent-youth living arrangements and that coresidence may be an important way in which insurance against labor market shocks takes place within the family.