Generation of Young Adults Living with Their Parents in European Union Countries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

A very interesting article, dealing with a comprehensively important issue at present.

Written in good language, it contains all the required elements.

 

From the cognitive point of view, however, it would be worth relating the obtained results to the social aspects of the studied phenomenon, including, for example, the quality of life of the inhabitants.

The following literature suggestions treat the issue of quality and standard of living in both general and detailed terms - it would be worth referring to them:

 

Theofilou, P. Quality of Life: Definition and Measurement. Eur. J. Psychol. 2013, 9, 150–162.

Felce, D.; Perry, J. Quality of life: Its definition and measurement. Res. Dev. Disabil. 1995, 16, 51–74.

Winiarczyk-Raźniak, A.; Raźniak, P. Regional differences in the standard of living in Poland (based on selected indices). Procedia-Soc. Behav. Sci. 2011, 19, 31–36.

Winiarczyk-Raźniak, A. Wybrane Usługi a Jakość życia Mieszkańców w Regionie Miejskim Krakowa. Prace Monograficzne Uniwersytetu Pedagogicznego; Naukowe Uniwersytetu Pedagogicznego: Kraków, Poland, 2008; Volume 508, p. 159.

 

In the Conclusion part, it is worth including already generalized conclusions, without detailed data, also applications of an application nature.

Author Response

The answer is in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The research topic is interesting, but the text needs more work. There is a need to write a clear goal of the paper, re-write the introduction and methods description, as well as add some discussion and generalisation based on the detailed results.

More remarks are given below:

 

Abstract:

• Line 10. „Young adult Europeans find it harder to get out of their native nest”. I would expect to get more information: either “harder […] nowadays than [when]” or ”harder than [who]”
• Line 16 “Young adults living with their parents are not only unemployed […]” This beginning suggests that all these young adults are unemployed, and additionally they face some other problems. Probably the authors meant that the group of nesters constitutes not only of the unemployed, but there are people with some other status on the labour market, as well. 
• Line 18 “We prove that the problem of nesting in individual European countries varied I intensity”. Please, make it clear if it varied within each of the countries or between the countries.
• Lines 20-21 “Moreover, there are significant disproportions in the level of nesting due to the activity and employment status,”. This sentence is not clear to me.

 

 

Introduction:

• Given the scope of the journal, I would expect some reference to some aspects of social sustainability, for example well-being of the nesters and their families (living conditions, education, social involvement, physical and psychological well-being, feeling of independence) and sustainability that matters to the whole society (heritage, spiritual values, inter-generation relations, generations replacement rate). There could be a paragraph or two either in the introduction or in the literature review (for example positive and negative consequences of nesting).
• Given the name of the special issue, I would be good to add some remarks on the uncertainty (either here or in the literature review).
• Lines 39-45. There is an interesting list of names given in various countries to the adult kids living with their parents. Some are easily understandable (such as parasitesingles), some are explained in parentheses (such as mammoni), but some are not. If it is possible, give a brief explanation to the remaining ones (gniazdownicy, zippy, puériculture) to make the text more consistent.

 

Literature review:

• In general, this section should have an order that will lead somewhere, have a clear vision. Please, consider the following ideas: from more qualitative to more quantitative methods of analysis OR separately countries with strong family ties and countries with early leavers (like on Figure 3) OR countries with large and lively housing markets (especially for rent) followed by countries with difficulties in finding accommodation, or some other idea that will put all these interesting publications in order.
• Please, consider clearly indicating which research refers to the young people who did not leave their home, which to those that returned to their parents, and which did not specify this difference. If it will not damage your vision of the text, maybe you could consider separating these issues (those who left and came back in one part, and those who did not leave at all in another part). Additionally, it would be beneficial to write (if such information is available) a very brief characteristics of each population or sample under cited studies (in some cases it is already present in the text, but in some it isn’t).
• Please, write about each publication in separate paragraph (if it is more than just 2-3 sentences).
• Lines 143-144. There is some problem with the text in brackets.
• Line 145. The brackets were open, but they were never closed.
• Lines 177-179. The following sentence is too long and not clear enough: “This article focuses the role that income plays in making it easier for young people to leave the family home is examined together with whether the effect is different if the income accrues to the young people themselves or to their parents.”
• Lines 179-180. “At work Skew and Iacovou [45] the authors investigated”. This language style is quite strange. It looks like it was written in Polish and later on translated word-by-word.
• Lines 214-216. There is something wrong with this sentence: “Tsekeris et al. [48] exploring the problem of boomerang kids in modern Greece using a qualitative method with partially structured, in-depth interviews.”
• Line 239: “countries like Italy and Spaniards”.

 

Materials and Methods

3.1. Materials

• In the materials section I would expect the description of dataset, definitions, and measures. In the methods we should find hypotheses and methods of analysis. I cannot find neither hypotheses nor the goal of the paper. The most of this section is rather the sample characteristics, which I would rather see after the materials and methods section. I understand that the description of the countries is supposed to justify the division of the countries into four groups, but this part should be much shorter here. The changes observed in the countries (line 340 and further) shouldn’t be in this section.
• Lines 295-296. The same sentence is written twice.
• Figure 2. Please, consider another order of the countries than the alphabetical order: either from the highest to the lowest, or maybe in such groups as in Figure 3. I leave it to your decision. The figure represents share of young adults still living with parents, while the comments below this figure refer to the age (perhaps average, but it is not written explicitly in the text) of leaving home. This causes confusion. Please, make it consistent: both the figure and the text should refer either to the share or to the age. Perhaps you could add some comments to the figure and later add information concerning the age.
• Line 315: “The longest male sex lived with their parents […]” This style seems a bit strange.
• Lines 322-323. I do not understand the following sentence: “The quickest - at the age of 17.6 years - the mixtures of Sweden left the family home.”
• Line 469. “Most often they were residents of Germany”. Do you mean that most of the student-nesters live in Germany? Or did you mean that in the Germany there was the highest percentage of nesters that were students, or maybe the highest percentage of students that were nesters?
• Lines 472-474. “The lowest percentage related to the UK (from 1.0% to 4.5%) and the highest - including the indicated Germany to Luxembourg (from 9.7% to 27.3%). Moreover, in this country […]” In which country? UK, Luxemburg, or Germany?

3.2 Methods

• This section begins with a brief description of possible methods of the analysis. In my opinion this part should be moved to the literature review and extended, if possible. In the methods section I would expect an explanation of methods actually used in this particular research, including the names of particular tests, that are given later in the Results section.
• Line 588. I would expect here a list of variables used in this particular research, indicating stimulants and destimulants (of what phenomenon?).
• Line 608, 627, and 631. It is written that the authors use the dynamic approach, while the static approach is also used further in the text – thus the text of the methods section should be changed.
• Please, explain the meaning of i, t, n under the formulas.

4. Results

• Lines 657-676. In my opinion this part should be in the methods section. Some of the information is repeated (it was written in the earlier sections).
• There is a list of the diagnostic variables, but what is the explained variable? Or do you form a kind of clusters? This should be explained in the text.
• Table 2. The title says: “Values of synthetic measures of activity and employment status in static terms”. In general, or among nesters? What do you mean by activity?
• Line 725. Please, write a brief explanation of the method of calculating percentages, as the figure “ 1860%” needs explanation.
• Line 755. “In 2018, Netherlands was first, and Croatia was last.”. Please, write explicitly, in what terms.
• Line 775. “one from the Eastern - Romania group”
• Lines 766-783. Please, provide some interpretation of these values. What do they mean?
• After giving detailed information on results for each country separately, It would be good to try to look for general patterns. Are there any similarities within the four groups of countries?

 

5. Discussion

• The first paragraph would fit well in the Introduction or literature review. In the discussion you should compare your results to the results of similar research of other authors, looking for similarities and differences.
• Lines 874-876. “In addition, the division of European countries proposed by us in terms of professional activity and employment status among nesters can be used in further analyzes of this phenomenon” You should put more attention to this interesting solution in the text – both in the methods section and in the results section.
• Maybe you could merge the conclusions and discussion section?

6. Conclusion

• Lines 888-889. “In 2019, after the age of 30, young people from southern Europe left their nest in 2019”
• Line 889. “The conducted research […]”. It is enough to write “the research”, as “the” means “this particular one we were talking about”.

Author Response

The answer is in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I see a significant improvement in this paper. There are some more remarks that could be taken into account:

• Introduction: your reply to my earlier comment on refernces to the research on the social sustainability of the nesting families. If it is not available, maybe it would be useful at least to give some common-sense remarks concerning the independence, privacy, and similar issues?
• The hypothesis should have a form of a statement, and not of a question. Besides that, I do not understand this question. Try to create something like this:

H1: On the country level high percentage of nesters is correlated with high percentage of the unemployed among young adults.

H2: On the country level high percentage of nesters is correlated with low level of professional activity rate among young adults. ·    

•      Line 218: Instead of variable “female” I would suggest to write “gender”·      
•    Lines 224-226. You could use this remarks also in the discussion section to comment, if indeed Eastern European countries form a different patterns than Germany. Similar remarks can be given to lines 254-259    
•  Lines 336-339. If in 2019 there were 23.9% nesters among men and 27.3% among women, how is it possible that there were 30.5% nesters altogether? Moreover, this text is not consistent with the Figure 1.
•    Lines 430-487. Do these figures refer to the employed persons in general (of working age group) in the country, to the young adults in general, or to the nesters? It is not clear.
• Line 526. Was the decrease 3.0 pp in total or per year?
• In the methods section there should be description of the source of the data, the years and the countries under study as well as the hypotheses (or the research question).
• Every Table and Figure should have a clear title, giving all the necessary information that is understandable even without reading the text. "What-where-when"
• Text Below Table 6 – following your reply to my earlier comment. I understood that this is the descriprtion of the Table 6. However, I would like to know, what is the deeper meaning of these results.
• Discussion and Conclusion: you cold make a comment on the differences between Figure 5 and Figure 3, giving potential explanation and proposing further directions for future research.
• Lines 950-956 would fit better at the very end of the text, as policy recommendation.

Author Response

Coverletter has been included.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

I am pretty satisfied with the present shape of the paper. Congratulations to the authors for a good job.

 

There just three minor issues:

• In lines 336-339 it is written: “In 2019, the percentage of nesters in European countries was 30.5% and, on average, since 2011, it has increased by 0.33 pp from year to year. In 2019, the percentage of men aged 25-34 who lived with their parents among all men was 23.9% and the percentage among women accounted for 27.3% of all women.” If there were 23.9% of nesters among men and 27.3% of nesters among women, the average for both genders should be between these values. Surprisingly, for both genders it is 30.5%. There are three possible explanations:
  • There is a misprint in the values
  • The authors used two different data sources that are inconsistent
  • The researchers gave a chance for non-binary genders, where the value of nesters was high enough, to rise the average to 30.5%.
• Figure 1. Title – please, indicate at least which countries are represented on this Figure.
• Figure 3. Title – add at least “by the scale of nesting after Iacovou [48]”

Author Response

The answer has been attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf