IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp6651.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fostering the Emancipation of Young People: Evidence from a Spanish Rental Subsidy

Author

Listed:
  • Aparicio Fenoll, Ainhoa

    () (Collegio Carlo Alberto)

  • Oppedisano, Veruska

    () (University of Westminster)

Abstract

In Southern Europe youngsters leave the parental home significantly later than in Northern Europe and United States. In this paper, we study the effect of a monthly cash subsidy on young adults' emancipation, family formation, and fertility. The subsidy, introduced in Spain in 2008, is conditional on young adults renting accommodation, and it amounts to almost 20 percent of the average youngsters' wage. Our identification strategy exploits the subsidy eligibility age threshold to assess the causal impact of the cash transfer. Difference-in-Differences and Regression Discontinuity estimates show that the policy increases emancipation rates by 0.9-2.3 percentage points, couple cohabitation by 1.2-2.4 percentage points, and the probability of having children by 4.8-8.1 percentage points for 22 year-olds compared to 21 year-olds. The effect is larger among young adults earning lower incomes and living in high rental price areas. This is consistent with the hypothesis that youngsters delay emancipation and family formation because they are budget constrained.

Suggested Citation

  • Aparicio Fenoll, Ainhoa & Oppedisano, Veruska, 2012. "Fostering the Emancipation of Young People: Evidence from a Spanish Rental Subsidy," IZA Discussion Papers 6651, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6651
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ftp.iza.org/dp6651.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    2. Maria Chiuri & Daniela Del Boca, 2010. "Home-leaving decisions of daughters and sons," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 393-408, September.
    3. Paola Giuliano, 2007. "Living Arrangements in Western Europe: Does Cultural Origin Matter?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(5), pages 927-952, September.
    4. Wilbert van der Klaauw, 2008. "Regression-Discontinuity Analysis: A Survey of Recent Developments in Economics," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 22(2), pages 219-245, June.
    5. Gianna Claudia Giannelli & Chiara Monfardini, 2003. "Joint decisions on household membership and human capital accumulation of youths. The role of expected earnings and local markets," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 16(2), pages 265-285, May.
    6. Sascha Becker & Samuel Bentolila & Ana Fernandes & Andrea Ichino, 2010. "Youth emancipation and perceived job insecurity of parents and children," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(3), pages 1047-1071, June.
    7. Lee, David S., 2008. "Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 675-697, February.
    8. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    9. Lee, David S. & Card, David, 2008. "Regression discontinuity inference with specification error," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 655-674, February.
    10. Mario García-Ferreira & Ernesto Villanueva, 2007. "Employment risk and household formation: evidence from differences in firing costs," Working Papers 0737, Banco de España;Working Papers Homepage.
    11. Susin, Scott, 2002. "Rent vouchers and the price of low-income housing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 109-152, January.
    12. Nuno Martins & Ernesto Villanueva, 2009. "Does High Cost of Mortgage Debt Explain Why Young Adults Live with Their Parents?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(5), pages 974-1010, September.
    13. Ermisch, John, 1999. "Prices, Parents, and Young People's Household Formation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 47-71, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. La emancipación con recortes rápidos y reformas a medio gas
      by Florentino Felgueroso in Nada Es Gratis on 2012-07-27 04:56:04

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ainhoa Aparicio-Fenoll & Veruska Oppedisano, 2016. "Should I stay or should I go? Sibling effects in household formation," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 1007-1027, December.
    2. Arnstein Aassve & Elena Cottini & Agnese Vitali, 2013. "Youth Vulnerability in Europe during the Great Recession," Working Papers 057, "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi.
    3. María Cervini-Plá, 2015. "Intergenerational Earnings and Income Mobility in Spain," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(4), pages 812-828, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    rental subsidy; conditional cash transfer; youth emancipation; family formation; fertility;

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6651. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Mark Fallak). General contact details of provider: http://www.iza.org .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.