Housing movements of the divorced and separated

The first section of the paper uses information from the 1976 Family Formation Survey to investigate the extent and pattern of the housing movements made by women at and subsequent to the breakdown of their marriages. Overall, half the women who had experienced breakdown left the marital home at breakdown, but this proportion varied with age, tenure, sharing status and whether or not there were children from the marriage. The Labour Force Survey of 1981 is then used to provide more detailed cross-sectional information on the housing and household circumstances of divorced and legally separated men and women than is currently available from other official statistical sources. It is shown that the parental home is an extremely important source of housing for young manual-class men whose marriages have broken down.