Growing up in Scotland: change in early childhood and the impact of significant events

CHAPTER 4: RESIDENTIAL MOVES

Research shows that moving house is one of the greatest stresses we face in our lives. Previous research on children who move house has shown that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in children can be triggered by a traumatic move (Steele and Sheppard, 2003). Parents often underestimate their children's feelings and younger children who see parents stressing over the basic inconveniences associated with moving are more likely to interpret their parent's behaviour as being their fault.

In this chapter we investigate the data GUS collects on residential moves. We focus on the number of times children move house during the first five years. We then explore the types of children most likely to make a house move, and frequent moves, during early childhood. We go on to see whether families who move house are at increased risk of drivers of child outcomes.

4.1 Key findings

• Moving house is a relatively common event in the first five years of a child's life; 40% of families moved at least once.
• The likelihood of a house move decreased as the child got older and the most common reason given for the move was to have a bigger home.
• Families most likely to move were those with young mothers, those renting privately, those with only one child and families living in urban areas.
• Families who had moved house once were more likely to subsequently have a mother with poor mental health, while families moving twice or more in the five-year period were both more likely to be living in income poverty and to experience poor maternal mental health.

4.2 How often do families move house?

In this section we illustrate the type and frequency of residential moves; looking at how many children moved house and whether this varies as children get older. We also look at why families move house and the number of times families moved during the first five years of the study children's lives. GUS asks a suite of questions about the family's home and begins by asking whether they have moved house in the last year ⁸ .

Table 4.1 Number of times children moved house in first five years

Number of times moved house	%	n
None	60	2274
One	32	1091
Two	7	205
Three	2	42
Four	<0	3
Total	100	3615

Base: All families taking part in all five years.

The majority of children (60%) did not move house over the period. Of those that did, moving just once was the norm. However, almost one in ten (9%) children moved twice or more, with a minority moving three or four times (2%). Our previous analysis of the Families and Children Survey (Barnes et al., 2008) showed that 29% of children (aged 0-16 years) had moved house over a five-year period (2001 and 2005), which supports the suggestion that families with younger children are more likely to move house ⁹ .

Table 4.2 Timing of first house move

Age of GUS child	% who moved house in last year	Base (unweighted)
Did not move	60	2274
Age 1-2	16	530
Age 2-3	11	368
Age 3-4	8	269
Age 4-5	5	174
Total	100	3615

Base: All families taking part in all five years.

Note: Families that moved house before the birth or between the birth and the first interview are counted as non-movers. This is for analytical purposes, allowing the event to occur after 'baseline' information collected in 2005/06 and before the most recent information collected in 2009/10.

The likelihood of a family moving house decreased as the GUS child got older. There are a number of explanations for this. First, the change in family composition at the birth of a child can change the accommodation needs of a family, presenting a need for different or bigger accommodation in the early years of the child's life. Secondly, it may be easier to move house with a very young child, who is easier to move physically, and has less of a connection with the area or local school. Thirdly, as the GUS child ages it is more likely that the family has a new child or the child has an older sibling who has become established at school - hence a family becomes more connected to an area. Finally, in longitudinal surveys it is more difficult to trace families who move house and hence some of the decrease of house moves might be explained by those who do move house not being recorded at later sweeps ¹⁰ .

Young families move house for a variety of reasons, for example, to get a foot on the housing ladder, to move to a bigger or better home, because a parent changes job or to be within a school catchment area. GUS asks for the main reasons why a family made a move. This question was not asked in all sweeps of GUS, only when the GUS child was aged 1-2, 2-3 and 4-5 years.

Table 4.3 Main reasons families move house

Reasons for moving house	2006/07	2007/08	2009/10
	Age 1-2	Age 2-3	Age 4-5
	%	%	%
For larger home	49	47	43
Wanted own place	16	11	11
Near relatives	10	9	9
Wanted to buy	8	7	5
For better home	18	18	19
Better area	17	17	19
Children's education	6	7	13
School catchment area	4	6	9
Near work	5	4	5
Changed job	2	2	0
Relationship breakdown	5	9	11
New relationship	2	1	3
No longer afford it	2	2	3
Evicted/repossessed	1	1	2
Away from crime	3	6	9
Problem neighbours	5	5	8
Wanted change	2	3	6
Other reason	15	18	23
Base (unweighted)	530	446	296

Base: All families taking part in all five years and who moved house.

Note: Multiple responses.

Moving to a larger or better house or a better area are popular reasons to move. Very few families were evicted or moved because they could not afford current housing costs. Overall, the reasons for moving remained fairly constant over time. Exceptions were moving because of relationship breakdown or a new relationship, which became more frequent as the child got older (which is interesting considering the opposite trend in the prevalence of separations noted in the previous chapter) - as did moving for reasons to do with the child's education, which clearly becomes more relevant as the child nears school age. Reasons that became less common were those associated with starting a family (likely to be relevant to those families for whom the GUS child was the first child), such as wanting to move to a larger house, and families wanting to buy or have their own house. Moving because a parent changed job was virtually non-existent in 2009/10, which may be linked to the depressed job market as a result of the recession - although few young families gave this reason before the recession.

Categorising families into 'voluntary' and 'involuntary' reasons to move - with the expectation that 'involuntary' changes might prove the more harmful to children - would have been a useful next stage. However, given that these distinctions are not clear cut (also note the large number of 'other' responses), and because we are missing reasons for two-fifths of the recorded moves (because the question was not asked in all years), this approach does not seem feasible.

4.3 Which families are most likely to move house?

We now go on to explore in more detail the characteristics of families in 2005/06 (when the child was aged 0-1) according to whether, and how often, they moved house.

Table 4.4 and Table 4.5 (below) show that families most likely to move house at least once included:

• Families with one child
• Families with a younger mother
• Families with a lower educated mother
• Lone-parent families
• Families with poor mother-infant attachment
• Families in rented accommodation
• Workless families
• Families on low income
• Families in urban areas
• Families in the most deprived areas

Families particularly likely to move more than once have broadly the same characteristics. The only exceptions are that families with mothers with poor mental health were also more likely to move twice or more, while the urban-rural classification of the local area was not associated with moving more than once.

Again, many of these characteristics go hand-in-hand and ordinal logistic regression was used to identify which of these characteristics remain associated with a house move when other characteristics are taken into account (see Table C.2 in the technical appendix for full results). The model suggested the following factors are important in predicting whether a family moves house or not:

• mother's age (with younger mothers more likely to move);
• housing tenure (families renting privately were substantially more likely to move than owner occupiers);
• number of children (families with children older than the GUS child less likely to move);
• mother-infant attachment (families with poor attachment more likely to move); and
• urban-rural classification (families in urban areas more likely to move).

The factors significantly associated with moving house, when other factors are controlled for, are highlighted in the tables.

Table 4.4 House moves by child and parental background characteristics

Base: All families taking part in all five years.

Note: Row per cent.

Note: Shaded rows show characteristics with statistically significant relationships with house moves, after controlling for other factors in multivariate regression analysis.

Table 4.5 House moves by household background characteristics

Base: All families taking part in all five years.

Note: Row per cent.

Note: Shaded rows show characteristics with statistically significant relationships with house moves, after controlling for other factors in multivariate regression analysis.

4.4 What happens to children that move house?

Table 4.6 presents the relationship between residential moves and drivers of child outcomes (measured in 2009/10).

Table 4.6 Drivers of child outcomes by residential moves

		%
Home chaos (% high level chaos)	Did not move house	35
	Moved house	36
	Moved once	36
	Moved 2+	35
	All	35
Income poverty (% poor)	Did not move house	26
	Moved house	36
	Moved once	33
	Moved 2+	47
	All	31
Maternal mental health (% with poor mental health)	Did not move house	13
	Moved house	19
	Moved once	18
	Moved 2+	22
	All	16
Pianta warmth (% lower or least warmth)	Did not move house	21
	Moved house	24
	Moved once	22
	Moved 2+	29
	All	22
Pianta conflict (% higher or most conflict)	Did not move house	15
	Moved house	19
	Moved once	19
	Moved 2+	18
	All	17
Bases
Weighted		3402
Unweighted		3413

Base: All families taking part in all five years.

Overall, there are relatively few differences observed in drivers for families who move house, compared with those who did not:

• Income poverty is more prevalent among families who have moved particularly families who have moved more frequently.
• A higher percentage of children who had moved house twice or more had less warm relationships with their mothers.
• A higher percentage of children who had moved house had more conflict in their relationships with their mothers.

Again we turn to multivariate analysis to investigate the relationship between the residential moves event and the drivers of child outcomes, while controlling for other factors. The table below (Table 4.7) summarises the results from the regression models (see Table D.6 to D.10 in the technical appendix for full results). Overall, moving house was significantly associated with income poverty and poor mental health, but not with home chaos or parent-child relationship.

• Moving once was associated with poor maternal mental health, although the negative effect of moving on mental health was removed entirely for mothers who had poor mental health prior to the move. In other words, for those mothers the higher likelihood of poor mental health after the move was explained by their previous experience of poor mental health.
• Moving twice or more was associated with a higher likelihood of income poverty, compared with not moving. However, the negative effect of moving twice or more on the likelihood of income poverty was not as strong for those already living on low income prior to the moves (in year 1). In other words, the high likelihood of these families living in income poverty after moving was partly explained by their prior experience of living on low income.

The timing of the house move (or the first move in the case of multiple moves) was not significantly associated with any of the drivers of child outcomes (models not shown).

Table 4.7 Relationship between house moves and drivers of child outcomes controlling for other factors

	Drivers of child outcomes
	High level home chaos	Income poverty	Poor maternal mental health	Parent-child - Low warmth	Parent-child - High conflict
Moved house once			?
Moved house twice or more		?
Driver present at year 1	n/a	?	?	?	?
Interaction: Driver present (year 1) and moved once	n/a		?
Interaction: Driver present (year 1) and moved twice+	n/a	? 1

Note: All factors other than the Event are measured at the sweep 1 interview (2005/06).

Note: Arrows indicate whether an event or year 1 driver category is associated with significantly higher (?) odds of the driver of negative child outcomes occurring, compared with the reference category.

Note: All factors with arrows (?) are significant at 5% level, unless otherwise indicated. Blank cells indicate no significant relationship.

Note: ¹Significant at 10% level.