Livets händelser i glesbygd och tätbygd : En livsbanestudie av ålderskohorten 1968–1971

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is twofold. First, from a life course perspective I´m going to study thetiming of a number of life course events in sparsely populated areas and urban areas in acohort of people born 1968-1971. The second part of the aim is to analyze how the timing ofthe life course events in a later stage of life affects the residential choice, with special focuson owning the dwelling, in the above mentioned geographical areas.The life course events in focus are; leaving the parental home, the first cohabitation or thefirst marriage, the first childbearing and the first separation or divorce.The results state that there are significant differences between sparsely populated and urbanareas in the cohort, in timing for at least three out of the four life events. The difference inaverage age between sparsely populated and urban areas is biggest for leaving the parentalhome and for the first cohabitation or marriage with the rural individuals being the youngest.The same pattern is also visible for the first child but the difference in timing between the twogeographical areas are less distinct for that event. For separations and divorces there are noclear differences in timing.Linear regressions show that educational level is of crucial importance for the timing ofthe life events. An increasing level of education leads to a later life event. Different economicvariables such as income support, unemployment allowance and disposable income also havean influence on the timing of the events. But the significance of the effect of these variableson the average age is stronger in the urban areas than in the sparsely populated districts. Itseems that in sparsely populated areas there are other variables that play an essential rolewhen it comes to the timing of the events in the life course. One possible aspect, but not investigatedhere, could be the impact of the wider family context.Finally, a control for how the different timing of the life events in the two geographicalcontexts affects the residential choice at least ten years after the events has been done. Itshows that the general pattern concerning the residential choice of the cohort is that 90 percentin sparsely populated areas and 70 percent in the urban areas defined as suburbs lives inowned villas. It seems that, in this cohort, house owning is an overrepresented way of residenceregardless the individuals geographical identity.The results also shows that people in the cohort, regardless if and when the four life eventshas taken place in the younger ages, to a large extent in the later life still lives in the sametype of municipality (sparsely populated or urban). In other words, it is not possible to findany strong correlations between the timing of the life events and residential choice in a laterstage of life.