Short- and long-distance home-leaving and home-returning: exploring the role of life course transitions

Coresidence with parents is one of the most common living arrangements for young adults, and many have returned home after first living independently. Shifting trends in home-leaving and home-returning have renewed research in this area, with a primary focus on how residential transitions are connected to other life course transitions. Fewer studies consider the geographic scope of the residential moves that drive home-leaving or home-returning transitions. The current study explores if life course events similarly predict residential transitions that start and end in the same county compared to those that start and end in different counties. Residential transitions are classified by their geographic scope using the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Multinomial regression models explore if the life course correlates of residential transitions vary by geographic scope. For most life course transitions, associations with same-county or different-county residential transitions vary primarily by a matter of degree. For others, such as parenthood and college degree attainment, links to residential transitions are in opposite directions based on the geographic scope of the residential transition. Results provide additional descriptive information on the geographic scope of the moves young adults make when they leave the parental home or return back to it. Variation in the associations between life course events and residential transitions of different geographic scope have implications for the contemporary transition to adulthood.