Two-home adults and children: long-lasting or transitory family situation? The case of France

Laurent Toulemon, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Sophie Pennec, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

With the increasing diversity of family situations, more people, children as well as adults, now ‘usually’ live in more than one dwelling. In a previous paper we estimated the proportion of people living in two dwellings in Australia and France, and described the consequences of these two-home situations on basic estimates of family situations based on ‘routine’ surveys or censuses. The significance of the “two-home” family situations heavily depends on whether they are long-lasting or transitory. The aim of this paper is to describe the transitions into and out of the different “two-home” situations, in order to better describe the dynamics of these situations and to understand their place in the family biographies of adults and children. We base our paper on a large-scale survey, the EU-SILC in France, where people are followed annually. We will use the three first waves, which took place in 2004, 2005 and 2006.