Supporting Young Adults’ Life Choices: A Longitudinal Perspective on the Role of Welfare Effort Across Crises

Young adults’ life choices and patterns of their permanence in the parental house are extraordinarily heterogeneous across European countries. What is the role of the welfare state in accounting for such diversity and how has it changed over time? This article addresses these questions by relying on regression models covering 31 European countries over the period 2005–2022. Deploying age-sensitive welfare effort measures, the study provides fresh empirical evidence about the ‘welfare matters’ hypothesis, confirming that even when controlling for a large set of economic, social, political and cultural variables, youth welfare effort remains a highly significant factor. Furthermore, our findings show that its role increased in the wake of crisis periods such as the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, producing additional divergence among countries. From a life-course perspective, these results suggest that targeted social spending may be an effective investment for promoting young people’s paths towards autonomy.