Author: Camila Weber

New Release: MicSim R Package Update

A new version of the MicSim R package by Sabine Zinn, Felix von Heusinger and Camila Weber is now available — bringing enhanced performance and new examples to support researchers.

MicSim enables researchers to simulate individual life courses using continuous-time microsimulation. Whether you’re modeling demographic transitions, educational pathways, family formation, or migration flows, MicSim offers a flexible framework for applications in demography, social sciences, and epidemiology. Life-course trajectories are defined using a continuous-time multi-state model, as described in Zinn (2014).

What’s New in This Version:

• New examples by Alex Lepe and Felix von Heusinger showcase practical applications of MicSim in research.
• Improved simulation engine: The ‘duration’ argument is now optional when not required, streamlining the simulation process.
• Enhanced usability: Several refinements have been made to improve the overall user experience.

For full documentation and details, visit the MicSim CRAN page. 

A new working paper by E. Benassi and S. Bedük provides new evidence on young people’s homeownership in Europe. The authors find that homeownership at ages 25 to 35 has declined sharply across cohorts born in the 1970s to 1990s, with smaller but still notable declines at ages 40 to 50. Declines at earlier ages, more common among the economically advantaged, likely reflect delayed entry into homeownership, while declines at later ages, concentrated among the disadvantaged, suggest exclusion from ownership altogether.

The authors also show that cross-cohort declines are not explained by differences in the composition of work and family characteristics between cohorts, pointing to more structural factors such as rising house prices.

The study draws on EU-SILC data from 2005 to 2020, covering 24 European countries. It is open access at SocArxiV.

Benassi, E., & Bedük, S. (2025). Young People’s Homeownership in Europe: Delayed or Out of Reach? A Research Note.

A new working paper by S. Bedük, E. Benassi and P. Lersch shows that the relative chances of homeownership between those with and without homeowner parents have remained largely stable across Europeans born in the 1950s to the 1980s. In other words, the intergenerational persistence of homeownership has not changed across these cohorts, as homeownership declined proportionally for both groups. However, this pattern varies considerably between countries, with the authors highlighting the role of national levels of parental homeownership in explaining these differences.

While such relative mobility has been stable, absolute mobility tells a different story. Downward mobility (children of homeowners who rent) rose from 16% to 36%, while upward mobility (children of renters who own) fell from 25% to 9% between the 1950s and 1980s cohorts.

The study draws on EU-SILC data from 2011 and 2019, covering 27 European countries. It is open access at SocArxiV.

Bedük, S., Benassi, E., & Lersch, P. M. (2025). Trends in relative and absolute mobility of homeownership in Europe.

A new open-access study by Sergi Vidal and co-authors in Population, Space and Place shows that separation sharply reduces the likelihood of owning a home—and that regaining ownership is mostly tied to repartnering. Using 1991–2019 panel data from England & Wales (BHPS/Understanding Society) and Germany (SOEP) and multilevel logistic models, the authors find that homeownership rates rise with time since separation primarily because many people form new unions; those who remain single—especially with lower socioeconomic status—rarely return to ownership. The study concludes that separation has long-term effects on housing careers and can widen housing inequalities, particularly in contexts like England & Wales where homeownership is the dominant tenure.

Citation: Mikolai, J., Kulu, H., Thomas, M. J., & Vidal, S. (2025). Time since separation, repartnering, and homeownership in England and Wales, and Germany. Population, Space and Place, 31(6), e70073.

On August 1st, 2025, Bettina Hünteler joined the DECIPHE project as a new member. As a postdoctoral researcher at DIW Berlin in Philipp Lersch’s team, her work will focus on explaining variations in the persistence of homeownership across countries and over time. Bettina is a trained sociologist and demographer who holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cologne. Before joining DECIPHE, she worked as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and at the University of Cologne. In addition to her work on the intergenerational transmission of homeownership and wealth, she is interested other aspects of social inequality—such as health—and how they relate to the family and migration, integrating the life course perspective and both within- and between-individual heterogeneity.