ABSTRACT
What explains the ‘millennial’ cohort’s delayed attainment of emancipation and family formation? This chapter confronts the central role of changing housing markets and welfare state policy in delayed ‘adulting’. Housing is central to structuring the attainment of life-cycle milestones, yet is often side-lined in welfare state research. This chapter emphasizes the broad role of welfare state policy on housing as an enabling (or disabling) force affecting access to independent living. From the 1990s onwards, welfare state policy, particularly related to housing, became increasingly a disabling force inhibiting easy exit from the parental home. States largely ignored the effects of rising income inequality on the ability of millennials to afford independent housing. At the same time, housing market financialization affected the price and supply of housing. The chapter presents research on data from the Luxembourg Income Study to uncover how millennials (and their extended families) have responded to these welfare state developments through delayed exits into adulthood and the formation of non-traditional households.
