TY  - JOUR
AU  - Galenson,David W.
TI  - On the Age at Leaving Home in the Early Nineteenth Century:  Evidence from the Lives of New England Manufacturers
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 1706
PY  - 1985
Y2  - September 1985
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1706
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1706.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David Galenson
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/702-8258
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: galenson@uchicago.edu
AB  - Much recent research has focussed on some decisions that affected family composition in the past, including the determination of the age of marriage and the timing of fertility. This paper considers another such decision that has been relatively neglected, the determination of the age at which children left the parental home. Observations drawn from a collection of biographies of successful New England manufacturers, most of whom departed from their parents' homes in the first half of the nineteenth century, indicated that their age of departure was concentrated in the late teen ages and early twenties, with a median of 18 years. Multivariate analysis suggested that the age at which these men had left home varied directly with family income or wealth and inversely with the opportunity cost of their retention at home. Sons whose fathers had died tended to leave home earlier than otherwise, as did those whose first job away from home was in the employ of a relative, while those whose families invested more in their formal education appear to have stayed home longer.
ER  -