Married couples are much more likely to move if a woman dislikes a neighbourhood than if her husband does. That is one of the findings from new research at ISER, which also concludes that the decision to move is based more on people’s perceptions of a neighbourhood than the reality.
Using information from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), Mark Taylor and Birgitta Rabe looked at data from more than 4,000 households in 30,000 different neighbourhoods across the UK and found a big difference between the sexes when it came to influencing decisions on whether to relocate.
The findings were part of a research paper called Residential mobility, neighbourhood quality and life-course events.
Explaining the background to the research, Mark said:
“Life-course events like having a baby, losing a job or splitting up are often associated with moving house. But not much is known about the effect that these types of events have on whether people move to a “better” or “worse” neighbourhood. This is quite surprising because research suggests that neighbourhood characteristics influence important outcomes such as life satisfaction, health and employment."
The researchers looked at whether people moved for subjective reasons – for example liking or not liking the neighbourhood or used more established objective criteria such as crime rates and employment opportunities. They found that people’s perceptions had a greater influence on the decision to move than reality.
Other interesting findings related to employment-related events in people’s lives. Birgitta Rabe explained:
“Among couples who move, most employment-related events of the husband or the wife have no effect on the quality of the neighbourhood the couples moves to. The only such event that seriously affects couples is a husband becoming unemployed. This leads to moves into more deprived areas and is likely to have repercussions for the whole family.”
The research also found that for singles and couples, many life-course events such as taking up a new
job, partnership break-up, a child leaving home and leaving the parental home were associated with moving house. Among the objective measures of neighbourhood deprivation, crime and the quality of the local environment both within and beyond the home were most important. Ceasing to live with parents or having a child leave home were associated with single people moving into more deprived neighbourhoods.
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