ABSTRACT
This chapter develops an individual choice model for describing the leaving-home process of young people in two countries. It aims to make the selection mechanism of young people facing the choice to stay versus to leave the parental home explicit. People's decisions to leave the parental home will depend on unconscious norms and values deriving from reference groups, about which they may not reflect at all. In addition, they will also depend on a personal evaluation of perceived alternatives. The chapter presents methodological questions and choices, describes the selection of cases, discusses the choice of the surveys, and also presents the statistical method and its application. The quality of living in the parental home can be seen as the result of the income of the parents minus the expenditures of the household plus the young person's own income plus the non-material well-being in the parental home.
