Proximity of couples to parents: influences of gender, labor market, and family

Summary

We use household survey data from the UK to study how close
middle-aged men and women in partnerships live to their parents and their
partner’s parents. We find a slight tendency for couples to live closer to the
woman’s parents than the man’s. This tendency is more pronounced among couples
in which neither partner has a college degree and in which there is a child. In
other respects, proximity to parents is gender-neutral, with the two partners
having equal influence on intergenerational proximity. Better educated couples
live farther from their parents. And although certain family characteristics
matter, intergenerational proximity is primarily driven by factors affecting
mobility over long distances, which are mainly associated with the labor
market, as opposed to gender or family circumstances.