ABSTRACT
Young people's decisions to leave the parental home are supposed to be influenced by the supply of dwellings. This chapters aims to describe the mechanisms through which social policies might be contributing to early home-leaving in France. Cross-national differences in the timing of the social rights career were shown to be less important than differences in the range of social benefits. Social benefits help young people to take the decision to leave home because they reduce uncertainty through the promise of maintenance allowances and services under given conditions. Studies of housing policy normally distinguish between governmental action in regulating the supply of housing by home constructors and regulating the demand of households by increasing the affordability of housing for needy social groups. In Spain housing policy was for a long time strongly dominated by the goal of favouring economic growth through public intervention into housing construction.
